


just ghosts

by brokenlittleboy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Barebacking, Blow Jobs, Bottom Sam, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, First Time (Kind of), Frottage, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Sam, Hallucifer, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Post-Cage, Post-Hell, Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn, Top Dean, Trans Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 15:11:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 52,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15003569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenlittleboy/pseuds/brokenlittleboy
Summary: Sam is brought back from hell broken into parts, memory gone, and fragile. He and Dean recuperate at Bobby's, and Dean teaches Sam how to be Sam. Having no memory is frustrating, and with a weak body, too, Sam finds himself leaning on Dean more and more. Something is wrongDean is conversing with Sam in a language Sam doesn't speak, pining after something they had that Sam doesn't have a name for. Sam's memories lurk around every corner, surprising him at random. He discovers an entire part of his identity, a happy, self-assured woman, has been deleted from his memory, locked behind The Wall due to a dangerous connection to Hell, and Dean was desperately in love with her. Sam struggles to come to terms with his identity and takes terrifying dips in icy Hell memories, watching herself get torn apart, but never him. Only her, until her very core was wrapped with the devil's, with pain. Despite the inevitable danger, Sam tries to make himself whole again, falling in love with Dean and descending deeper into the rabbit hole.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Please look at the wonderful art that was made by the creative and disciplined be_my_precious. Holy cow, you are talented. https://be-my-precious.livejournal.com/805350.html
> 
> Another post-cage fic from me. I am not sorry.

PROLOGUE

 

Sam opened his eyes.

 

He blinked and sat up slowly. His back popped. He stretched his jaw, feeling his ears crackle. His head was foggy, and he stretched, trying to clear away some of the confusion.

 

He looked down at himself, but there was no self to look at.

 

Something poked at his brain and he looked to the right, breath hitching.

 

Mom.

 

Mary sat--or existed, or something, his head still hurt--by his side, waiting patiently, pleasant smile spreading across her lips, a look so full of motherly love and understanding gracing her eyes that Sam felt calmer, more centered, less afraid of the dark and the murk.

 

“Hi, Sam,” Mary said, smile widening.

 

Sam smiled back at her. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

 

“I’m here to help you on your way, sweetheart,” she said. “It’s time.”

 

Sam’s first instinct was to ask questions, to find out what it was time for, but something deeper inside him already knew. Something older. Something that was him, but not him, something way down deep, ancient and tortured.

 

Sam held himself still. “Where am I going?” he asked.

 

Mary smiled again. “Home,” she said. “You’re going home. You’ve repented. It’s time to rest. Just lay back, okay? Sleep. You are saved.”

 

Something hummed in his chest, something discordant, but Sam ignored it. He searched Mary’s kind eyes, trusting what he found there, and slowly laid back into the plush embrace of nothingness, closing his eyes and letting the small world he’d inhabited completely disappear.


	2. Chapter 2

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

It was years later when Sam returned to existence.

 

He started out as a pulse in the dark, a small zap of electricity in place of a long-held silence and stillness. He was underwater, at night, and just had to reach the moon, just had to breach the surface tension. He kept swimming up and up, but never made any progress, never took a single breath of fresh air.

 

It happened at once, not abrupt, not slowly, just… there.

 

He inhaled. He swallowed. His mouth was dry and he coughed a little, throat protesting. He exhaled. He did it again and again.

 

He opened his eyes, but the world was a bright blur. He reached a hand up, pressing shaking, fumbling fingers to the corners of his eyes to remove the sleep sticking there.

 

Heat and pressure on his arm. He kept breathing, kept blinking, and the world beneath him became a bed--a cramped, firm bed. Legs under a blanket.

 

His eyes wandered until they found the source of the heat and pressure. A hand, bony and broad. A craftsman’s hand. Freckled. 

 

He tilted his head up ever so slowly, and his eyes found another’s. 

 

Green, so green, and so familiar, creased like that in worry and just barely smothered hope. Hope that shone out like a ray of sunshine after the worst storm of the year.

 

“Sammy?” Dean rasped. Scooting his chair forward. “You there, buddy?”

 

Sam swallowed. The pace of the heart monitor sped up slightly. 

 

Sam sat up, arms barely holding his body up. Dean came to his rescue, putting his arms around Sam’s middle and helping him get upright. Sam coughed, and coughed again, body wracking with the spell. 

 

Dean was there throughout it all, hand on Sam’s knee. Sam’s knee, which existed, and was under a blanket and a hospital gown and on top of a hospital bed. 

 

“Dean?” Sam said, and he watched Dean fall apart and gather himself up. Dean’s head dropped but he picked it right back up, grinning at Sam with shiny eyes.

 

“That’s me,” Dean said. “How you feelin’?”

 

Sam wiggled his toes. He cracked his knuckles. He looked around the room. Vague shapes and symbols became T.V.s and cabinets and English. English was a language he knew. One of many, but it was his mother tongue.

 

Mother. Mary. Sleep. Wake. Dean, Dean, Dean.

 

“Are you… real?” Sam whispered, and something was catching at the back of his head, something he couldn’t quite recall. His gut begged him not to poke and prod, not to go down that rabbit hole, but another part of him felt like he was lying to himself if he didn’t open up Pandora’s box. 

 

Darkness. Fear. 

 

He closed his eyes. He could stand to not remember a few things.

 

“Hey. Hey. I’m real, flesh and blood,” Dean murmured urgently, putting a hand on Sam’s jaw. 

 

Sam opened his eyes. Dean was right there in his space, eyes narrowed, warm breaths puffing onto his face. Dean’s breath stank of beer. 

 

Dean’s fingers curled around the back of his skull and massaged at the nape of his neck, under his hair. Sam sighed. That was familiar. 

 

“I’m real,” Dean repeated.

 

“Okay,” Sam said, more for Dean’s benefit than anything else. He wasn’t exactly set on real versus unreal, on truth versus untruth, but all things considered, all accessible memories considered, he could roll with this.

 

Each moment, another part of him woke up. He went from feeling like nothing to a concept to a collection of concepts to a story or a memory of somebody to maybe, truly, actually someone.

 

It was an odd feeling. He’d never been anybody before, had he? Was he a person?

 

“I’ll grab the doctor,” Dean said, clearing his throat, and then he was up and out faster than Sam’s wearied eyes could track him.

 

Sam stared at the door long after he went, zoning in and out. His thoughts wandered to ridiculous places, picking up threads at random.

 

A raft on a lake. Wet, cold, skin. Dean pulling a blanket over his shoulders, shoulders so small. He’d looked up into Dean’s eyes then, from somewhere below. 

 

Sam looked down at his shaking hands. He couldn’t help but feel like several million years had elapsed since any little boys had gone to a lake in Washington. The concept of Washington itself was something old, something gift-wrapped and left to a past time. He’d spent most of his time in a place that didn’t have a concept of Washington.

 

Sam was getting an idea of who he was, and where he’d come from, and it came with black and blank and burnt and razed thoughts. A long time ago, he might’ve been a part of this world, but at his heart, he never had been. He came from fire and ice, not flesh and bone, not like Dean. 

 

He remembered things, happy things, safe things, normal things, but he remembered them through a camera, through a T.V. screen. They weren’t him, the emotions weren’t his.

 

Dean came back with a strange woman and Sam sat up, straightening his shoulders. He put on a smile, pretending to be normal. He read from a script while she asked him questions. 

 

Some of them he couldn’t answer. His name. Sam or Sammy? Or something else? Dean helped him with that one. Who was president. The answer to that one sounded fake. Others, he could answer. He felt okay. He remembered seeing Mom. That one made Dean bite at his fingernails and look away. 

 

The doctor seemed to be satisfied with something. She left, leaving him and Dean alone together again.

 

Dean sat back down in his chair and leaned forward, brushing Sam’s hair off his shoulder. Had it been that long before? “They’re not gonna buy the whole messed up insurance thing much longer, so we’re gonna go to Bobby’s, okay?” Dean murmured. “You can rest up there.”

 

Sam nodded. He would go anywhere and do anything as long as meant being real. “Okay,” he said. 

 

Dean smiled at him, but it was a little tight at the edges. Sam smiled back, just the same.

 

***

 

The car was the first thing--besides Dean, of course--that made him feel that little jolt.

 

Dean, dressed in blue scrubs and acting as casual as you please, wheeled him out of the hospital, and there it was, sitting pretty at the curb.

 

Big and black and old. Dean had taken good care of the car, polished her, replaced the rims.

 

Dean helped him into the passenger seat. Sam had about eight seconds of alone time in the car while Dean moved the wheelchair and went around to the driver’s side. Sam spent every one of those seconds with his hands roaming the dash, the little chrome radio buttons, the bumpy spot in the leather seat where Sam once worked a twig under the stitching. 

 

Dad had been pissed. Dean had admonished him as seriously as a nine year old could.

 

The driver’s side door opened and Sam put his hands in his lap. He looked down at his lap as Dean started the car and drove them through the parking lot. 

 

It started to lightly rain. He could hear it on the dashboard window. Sam’s wrists were bony and thin, knobby, different from Dean’s.

 

“Hey,” Dean said, and Sam looked up, blinking. They were sitting at a red light behind a lot of other cars. The windshield wipers were doing their best, but the world was still a little blurry. It was really coming down now.

 

“Let’s listen to something, huh? You pick.”

 

Sam took a moment to process Dean’s words. Once he did, he opened the glove box, mechanically taking the worn shoe box out and putting it in his lap. Little cases full of memories. He only hoped that he could actually take them out and hold them in his hands instead of stare at them from behind a scratched layer of plastic.

 

Sam read the spines. He recognized them all. He found Bob Seger. Like a Rock. 

 

He pried it out and handed it to Dean while putting the shoe box back. The glove box clicked shut at the same moment Dean scoffed and the car accelerated, light finally turned green.

 

“You’re kinda predictable, you know that?” Dean said. “I’ll forgive you, though, ‘cause it’s good ol’ Bob.”

 

Dean drove with one hand on twelve o’clock, body loose, legs casually spread. He put the cassette in the player and they were immediately accompanied by an acoustic ballad.

 

Sam leaned back, letting out a breath. Okay. This felt real. He wanted so badly to let himself have it, but the animal part of him still had its hackles raised. 

 

They got onto the highway. Bright white headlights in one direction and bright red ones in the other. Green exit signs flashing by. The storm clouds made it seem later than it was. Billboards yelling that Jesus died for your sins. 

 

Yeah, well I did, too, Sam thought, and smiled, the action coming a little easier than before.

 

They were half an hour out from Sioux Falls when Sam twitched in his seat, a thought striking him just as a deep rumble stirred the sky. Dean sent him a quick glance, hand briefly clenching on the wheel.

 

“Dean,” Sam said, drawing the syllable across the roof of his mouth, “what day is it?”

 

Dean gave him another look, lingering a bit too long to be safe in these conditions. “November second, twenty-seventeen.”

 

Oh. _ Oh. _ He remembered whispering to himself: May second, May second, May second, two thousand eleven. He’d been down there a long, long time.

 

Sam swallowed reflexively when the chill hit the base of his spine. Almost six years up here. Down there, probably more than the half life of plutonium-240. He looked at his wrists again and wondered if he was radioactive.

 

Sam felt a blockage in his throat. “Dean,” he said hoarsely. 

 

Dean turned Mr. Seger down and gave Sam’s leg a solid pat. “Hey,” he said, and Sam felt a little deja-vu. “Sammy, I know. Jesus, I fucking know. Look at me. I’m an old man.” A bitter laugh, a pregnant beat. Dean cleared his throat. “Just sit tight, okay?”

 

Sam didn’t really have much to do besides that. He stayed quiet, and after a couple of beats and lane changes, Dean put the music back up, driving faster. 


	3. Chapter 3

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

They stopped for slurpees and a bathroom break outside of Sioux Falls. Sam had to stay in the car because he didn’t have a change of clothes and they didn’t want people to be asking questions about a big guy in a hospital gown. 

 

Sam was licking red off of his lips when they pulled into Bobby’s gravel driveway, car rocking like a boat on the sea.

 

It was still raining, but it had lightened up. The sky, by contrast, had not. It was around sunset. 

 

The house was lit up from the inside in gold, and Bobby’s silhouette stood leaning against the porch railing. 

 

The Impala’s headlights illuminated him briefly before Dean took the key out of the ignition and hopped out of the car. 

 

Sam got out on his own, knees popping as he stood. A hand came to the small of his back, and Dean was right there, leading him up the porch.

 

Sam stopped at the top of the steps. Bobby looked him up and down, schooling his features. Sam looked down at himself. Oh, yeah. He was still in a hospital gown.

 

Bobby held open the screen door for them and they stepped into the frame at the same time, shoulders squeezing against each other.

 

Once inside, Sam froze at the sound of barking. A puffy, chubby Border Collie came up to him, tail wagging, wet nose pressing against his hand. Sam stared down at the dog as it walked circles around him and Dean, sniffing them.

 

“Oh, that’s just Copernicus,” Bobby said, voice rough and overly-casual. “I got ‘er a few years ago to keep me company.”

 

Sam looked down at her and tried to smile. “Like Doc Brown’s dog?” he asked.

 

He looked up just in time to watch Bobby and Dean trade looks. Bobby grinned at him. “Yeah,” he said. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Long name, though.”

 

Sam ran his hands through her autumnal fur, brown and rouge on top and white around her tummy. “Hey, Copper,” he said, and Bobby chuckled. 

 

“Let’s get you settled, huh? The room upstairs is all ready,” Bobby said. 

 

Sam nodded, still looking at Copper. He’d been gone long enough for Bobby to get a dog, and for the dog to develop cataracts. 

 

Sam empathized with her. He knew what it was like to be an old dog.

 

Dean called his name and Sam walked over to the stairs with Copper at his heels. They headed upstairs and down the hall. The second door on the left had “SAM & DEAN” taped on it, printed by a faithful label maker Sam had been obsessed with before John tossed it. 

 

The label was peeling at the edge, so Sam pressed his finger into it as he walked into the room.

 

The room was utterly unchanged from the various identical memories he sifted through, all of a teenage boy stewing over an argument with John. Two queen beds, one dresser, rolltop desk in the little nook by the window. 

 

Sam walked over to the window, aware of Bobby and Dean watching him. He looked down into the side yard. The trees were starting to turn. A ramshackle doghouse, wood not yet bleached by the sun, sat under a Poplar.

 

“I’m gonna get started on dinner,” Bobby said. Sam turned back around. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

 

Bobby left, closing the door behind himself with a soft click. Sam listened as Bobby and Copper trotted down the stairs.

 

“So.” Dean clapped his hands together, beaming at Sam. “It’s good to be back, huh?”

 

Sam wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He flashed Dean a little smile and sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window. After a beat, Dean came and sat down next to him, their thighs pressed together.

 

They sat in silence. Dean put an arm around Sam’s shoulders and took a shuddery breath. Even as Sam watched the moon reveal itself from behind a sheath of clouds, he could feel Dean’s eyes drawn to his face, tide drawing the wave out of the ocean.

 

“What day is it?” Sam asked.

 

“Don’t you remember?” Dean asked, and his voice was quieter and more careful than Sam was used to. It was like that time he broke his arm while Dad wasn’t home and Dean biked him to the hospital with a fake man’s credit card in his pocket.

 

“Is it the same?” Sam asked, turning to look at Dean. “Is it later?”

 

Dean took a moment to respond, and Sam felt a little self conscious. “Time is… hard,” he said. “It was different there.”

 

Dean was nodding before he finished the sentence. “‘Course,” he said, too easily. “It’s still November second, twenty-seventeen. It was, uh, around three last time, and now it’s after six.”

 

Sam nodded, slowly, committing it to memory. 

 

Dean must’ve seen something on his face. He stood up. “Here,” he said. “This should help.”

 

Dean dug around in the dresser, pulling out a worn pair of sweatpants and a ratty grey tee. After some more searching, he unearthed a brown hoodie from deep within a duffel bag filled with Dean’s stuff.

 

“Go put this on,” Dean said. “You’ll feel more normal.”

 

Sam took the clothes from Dean, acutely aware of the different textures and fabrics and how they rubbed against his palm. Feeling was still a little foreign.

 

When Sam came out of the bathroom, Dean melted a little, a sheen across his eyes again. “That’s better,” he said. “This, uh, this is the crowning jewel, though.”

 

Dean held out something small. Sam stepped closer, feet cold on the floorboards, and took it from him ever so gently, draping the band across his long fingers.

 

It was a beaten up black digital watch. Sam recognized it. His joints locked up when a visceral memory hit him in the gut. 

 

Him and Dean in a motel bed together. The morning before Detroit. Sam taking off his watch and giving it to Dean. Dean rejecting the gift. Dean holding him, really holding him for the first time in a long time. Anger and fear and bitterness and a big well of something undefinable that was always reserved for Dean.

 

He only got the memory for a second before a sharp pain in the center of his forehead stole it away from him, like he was a dog with a shock collar who had tried to run out of the carefully marked yard. He backed away from the border, and let the memory slip from between his fingers, like a dream that got foggier and foggier the longer it had been since he’d dreamed it.

 

“Sammy? Sammy?” Sam blinked, and found Dean in front of him. 

 

Sam tried to put the watch on. “Sorry, uh, uh…” He had no lame, comforting excuse. He didn’t even really know why he’d frozen; he couldn’t quite remember. Dean’s warm, confident hands took control and put the watch on his wrist. One of the little holes was worn and stretched at the sides, but they had to use two sizes smaller to keep it from sliding on his wrist.

 

Dean put a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and Sam looked into his eyes. There was so much packed there, so much ready to break through. Sam had to look away. He glanced down at his watch. “November second, twenty-seventeen, six forty-four,” Sam whispered.

 

Dean nodded. “Your name is Sam Winchester, you’re my little brother, and you’re okay,” he said. His hand left Sam’s shoulder and went to his back. Dean pulled him into a slow hug, tight and life-affirming. Sam closed his eyes and hugged Dean back, pressing his nose into the crook of Dean’s shoulder.

 

Dean’s back trembled under Sam’s wide palms. Sam stayed there for him, content to be physical, to be blood circulating and synapses firing, while Dean needed it. While Dean needed a reminder.

 

Dean pulled away and rubbed at his eye with his knuckles. “You’ll get better,” Dean said roughly. “I said I’d save you. I never stopped.”

 

Sam nodded. The minutes were really starting to feel like minutes now, passing one after another in order with the same amount of time in between. The moon was still out outside the window. Dean was still whole. Sam was beginning to suspect he might be, too.

 

A few different memories fluttered to the surface when Sam thought of comfort. Lots of sick nights and stitched-up bodies. 

 

“Wanna watch a movie?” Sam asked, and Dean gave him a look like Sam was the reason the sun shone. 

 

***

 

Sam awoke the next morning waiting for a piano to fall on his head.

 

All throughout breakfast, it felt like the piano was lurking over him, attached to the ceiling by a single, fraying rope. 

 

Dean, as always, had senses far more heightened than Sam’s, which still felt new and infantile, and had a hand on Sam’s wrist the moment Bobby took Copper out on a walk.

 

Sam swallowed a piece of banana peanut butter pancake and met Dean’s eyes.

 

“You good?” Dean asked. 

 

Sam nodded. He didn’t know how much he could tell Dean. He didn’t know what would be good to say or what would make Dean cry. He could remember knowing what to say, and knowing exactly when to say it, but he was still a little rusty.

 

Dean was waiting for him to say more, and Sam didn’t want to keep him waiting long. “I just keep expecting to be back,” Sam eventually said.

 

Dean’s eyes went hard. The hand on Sam’s wrist tightened. “You’re never going back,” he said, voice dropping to a steely rumble in determination.

 

Sam put his fork down, and Dean withdrew his hand. Several questions percolated in Sam’s brain. 

 

“How do you know?” he asked, starting with the most obvious one. Another one bubbled up, equally as important, and he decided it couldn’t wait. “What happened?”

 

Dean leaned back, mulling over something. Deciding on how much to lie, probably. Sam blinked. That thought had come all by itself, almost by reflex. He summoned a few memories to supplement it. They were vague, just impressions at best: one of them walking out on the other, holding back a sickness, protecting the other, over and over again. Problems put on the back burner with false platitudes.

 

It hadn’t always been like that, had it? There had been good moments, raw, honest moments. Sam thought. He found a faded postcard in his head of a first-grader Dean running around with toddler boy Sam in a red wagon. 

 

What else was there? Sam couldn’t recall.

 

It unsettled him.

 

Dean poked him in the side. “You listening to me?” he asked.

 

Honesty. Lies. “No,” Sam said. “I drifted.”

 

Dean gave him a look. “I was sayin’, it’s a long story, which calls for a long drive.”

 

Sam couldn’t agree more.

 

***

 

It wasn’t raining anymore, but it was still cloudy. They turned and drove away from Sioux Falls, out into the big wide plains. Bobby’s property sat on the edge of miles and miles of farmland and forest. Sam loved it.

 

Dean hummed under his breath. They had some soft rock station on. They passed by an old chain link fence with a sign on it and Sam sat up straighter. He craned his neck, staring behind them as it got smaller and smaller.

 

Dean gave a short laugh, and Sam untwisted himself, sitting normally. 

 

“What were you looking at? Peter Ellis’s?” he said, smile in his words. “Man, good times.”

 

Peter Ellis. Sam ran the name over his tongue. He waited for his brain to bring back some corresponding memories. There wasn’t much, only a vague collection of running like hell, and later sitting in the bathtub frantically rubbing at his red legs. Poison Ivy.

 

“Can we go there?” Sam asked. The car slowed.

 

“We haven’t snuck in there in ages,” Dean said, lost in some memory. “That old man’ll kill us.”

 

As he said it, he executed a flawless three-point turn, driving back the way they came and pulling over in front of the sign.

 

NO TRESSPASSING, it said in red paint. PUNISHABLE BY DEATH. Sure.

 

The car stopped and Sam got out. He looked over the roof of the car and met Dean’s eyes. They shared a small smile. 

 

Dean went around to the trunk, and Sam followed.

 

Dean dug through their weapons cache, putting a sawed-off in his jacket. “Just a precaution,” he said at Sam’s look. 

 

Sam picked up a silver Colt 1911 with a pearl grip. He turned it over in his hands. The weight was familiar. He had strong sense memories of cleaning it, reloading it, firing it.

 

Dean was watching him with a guarded look. Sam twirled the gun in his hand, easy as you please, and tucked it into the waistband, right at the small of his back. Next, he found a bowie knife, sharpened lovingly but leather handle worn to hell. 

 

He spun it in one hand, tossed it, and caught it in the other. He tucked it into his coat.

 

He looked up at Dean. Dean was grinning like crazy, like Sam had just stripped naked or something.

 

Sam coughed. He looked away from Dean, afraid he’d see the thought in his eyes. Where had that come from? Sam’s nakedness. There was something there but he couldn’t reach it at all.

 

Dean slammed the trunk. He tilted his head back toward the fence. “Shall we?”

 

Sam nodded, and he and Dean set to work. The fence curled up against the post a few yards away from the sign, links cut away about halfway up. It was just a big enough gap for someone on their hands and knees to crawl through. 

 

Sam kept watch while Dean went under. He looked like an idiot. Dean’s knees were covered in mud, and his coat had gotten caught on the fence, displaying a plumber’s crack to Sam.

 

Dean kept watch from inside, and Sam crawled under, too. He made it just fine, nothing catching on anything. His hands and knees were cold from the half-frozen ground.

 

He stood up, looking at the world from behind a fence. He shivered and turned around, staring off into the woods instead.

 

It was dense and low down and loaded with spiky underbrush. It’d be a real bitch to galavant through. 

 

Dean called his name. “Over here,” he said.

 

Sam came over and looked into a tiny, serpentine path leading deeper into the property. A deer path, not a real one, but much better than nothing.

 

Sam checked his watch. One seventeen. November third. Twenty seventeen. He was Sam Winchester, he was Dean Winchester’s brother, and he felt okay.

 

They pushed into the woods, swiping branches out of the way as they plunged deeper. 

 

They were making decent progress, only slowing down to step over some nasty looking thorns or to circumnavigate a patch of ivy. 

 

“Man, memories,” Dean said, laughing. “How old were you last time we did this, sixteen?”

 

Sam tried to recall. “I don’t remember,” he said.

 

Dean stopped without warning, and Sam bumped into him. Dean gave him a look. “You don’t?” he said.

 

“I don’t remember a lot of things,” Sam said, and honestly, the honesty was purifying. “I think it comes with the territory.”

 

Dean didn’t look satisfied with that answer, but he didn’t look too worried, either, nodding with his lips pursed. “What kind of things do you remember?”

 

Sam shrugged. Dean turned back around and they kept moving. Sam ducked under the wide branch of a Douglas Fir. “I remember breaking my arm, I remember yelling at Dad about staying at Thornton Middle School, I remember jumping in a lake with you in October and almost freezing to death.”

 

Dean stepped on a branch and it cracked loud enough for a bird nearby to take flight, wings fluttering. “So… old stuff,” he said. “You can’t be more’n twelve or thirteen in all of those memories.”

 

Sam stumbled a bit, frowning. He hadn’t realized. “I guess,” he said haltingly. “Maybe it comes back in order.”

 

“Maybe.” Dean didn’t sound convinced. “You’ll tell me if you remember something new?”

 

Sam wanted to say that he’d be speaking constantly if he agreed to that, since little odd things came to him almost all the time, but he held his tongue. “Okay,” he said instead. 

 

Out of nowhere, the path widened out, becoming something that two men could walk side-by-side on, grass overgrown, branches poking out, but in one piece. Peter Ellis must have stopped taking care of it. That, or he was dead. Sam couldn’t really remember him but he felt like it was possible. 

 

They walked in tandem, following the path down a hill that gradually steepened. At the bottom, the path spread into a small field, about the size of half of a soccer field. There were pine trees here and there, and benches on the fringes. 

 

Sam craned his neck, looking at the hills, at the skyline, at the trees. 

 

It was familiar, but whatever memories made him feel that way were out of his reach. It was the oddest sensation, like trying to walking through an open space and smacking into a pane of glass. 

 

Dean loped over to the nearest bench and they sat down on it, keeping close to each other’s space, and Sam knew that it was because of more than the slight chill in the air.

 

Dean sighed, his breath fogging up the air before him.

 

“So.” Dean coughed after a few beats of silence. “I don’t really know where to start. You’d been gone for three years before something finally happened, and uh, those years weren’t my best.”

 

Sam leaned back and listened. He watched a v of geese traverse the sky as Dean fiddled with his hands, knee jiggling as he talked about the things that pained him the most.

 

Dean wove him a story that started with a man on a woman’s doorstep. Sam couldn’t remember her--Lisa--but Dean said he’d met her while Sam was at college, and they shared a quick fling. They met again several years later, right before Dean went to hell, and Dean and Sam saved her kid. Dean mentioned Sam being jealous, but he couldn’t remember it.

 

Dean stayed with Lisa for six months. He tried to have a relationship with her, as Sam had allegedly asked him to before he jumped, but couldn’t, not after what happened. Dean left and did nothing for a while. A long while. Dean sort of glossed over that period, and Sam got the idea that Dean had been close to the edge the whole time, tempting dangerous things. Sam felt his hands clenching, his jaw tightening in worry, even though that dark period had long since ended. 

 

Dean found himself some hunts after that, and did some lazy solo jobs, practically asking to get killed. Bobby tracked him down, saving him from himself. And from a rawhead. Dean stayed with Bobby on a house arrest type deal. It was the same every day for a while until Cas showed up after three years of absence.

 

Heaven had gotten seriously fucked over after Michael and Lucifer left, Dean said, bitching about the angels being unable to think for themselves. Cas had to pick up the pieces, along with several other more enterprising angels, and a brief civil war followed.

 

Cas was moving up in the world. He hadn’t planned on visiting Dean at all, even with all the times Dean had prayed, until God had specifically asked him to.

 

Yes, Sam heard that part right. God had spoken to Cas in all his holy heavenliness, and had some pertinent information he wanted shared with Dean. Why he had to play a game of telephone to do it, Dean had no idea.

 

God’s message was simple. Sam was almost entirely gone, soul and all, an inch away from complete and utter nonexistence due to Lucifer’s unimaginable torture. God intervened. God decided that Sam had atoned for his sins, that Sam had saved the world, that if anyone was God’s son, Sam was. Instead of letting his soul burn out, God took that last little piece out of the cage and started stitching it back together.

 

It wasn’t so easy to make a whole being out of so little, though, and it took even God himself some time to work a Sam out of the soul-scrap. 

 

The person that came from it was… damaged, to say the least. Hell hadn’t just left a mark on Sam’s soul. Hell had affected it down to the core. Hell had branded it.

 

God, with Dean’s long-distance help, put up a wall around the hell part of the soul--the majority of Sam’s soul--and nurtured the rest to grow. Dean had given God part of his soul as a soul-seed (Dean’s words) to make sure Sam’s would be okay. 

 

The body came next. God made it as best he could but the body that matched the soul was emaciated and withered, underweight and short. So the body had to go to the hospital and get some fluid intravenously. 

 

God worked on the soul, the doctors worked on the body, and Dean oversaw it all. One day, it just came together, somehow, and Sam woke up. Dean had never actually seen or spoke to god, only to Cas, had only worked directly with Cas, getting a soul-fisting, which apparently hurt like a bitch, had only walked into a Sioux Falls General hospital room and seen Sam there, comatose and strange looking. He hadn’t heard from Cas since then. No response to prayer.

 

So here they were. Sam felt less than cold, lighter than empty. He felt like nothing. He became aware of his breathing, of his heart beating in his chest, of the whiteness of his fingertips in the near-freezing temperatures.

 

That was why Sam felt like a new creature, just birthed, but also old, born in hell. That was why Sam couldn’t remember. That was why his feet didn’t always move the way his brain asked. 

 

The wind pushed his hair around. Sam stared into the middle distance, unseeing. Dean was silent next to him. 

 

He wasn’t a real boy. 

 

But where had he come from in the first place, if not from God?

 

Then he was like a crew member on the U.S.S. Enterprise, beamed up by Scotty a billion times, a copy of a copy of a copy. 

 

“I know it’s a lot,” Dean broke in, pushing Sam’s hair behind his ear, “but we saved you. You’re out.”

 

Sam was beginning to think that point was debateable.

 

“I don’t… I’m not…” Sam shook his head, frustrated. He couldn’t word it to Dean without Dean either freaking out or telling him he was wrong. “I’m not the same as before.”

 

Dean made a little noise, part scoff, part laugh. “Neither the fuck am I,” he said. “I wasn’t the same after hell, and I wasn’t the same after you le--after you _ died _ . We just keep going anyway, Sammy.”

 

Dean turned to face him, putting his hands on Sam’s shoulders. The look in his eyes was intense. Sam couldn’t breathe for a moment, drawn into Dean’s gaze. 

 

“He gave us a second chance. I don’t expect things to go back to normal. Hell, I expect things to suck for a while. But I have you back. And I’m not letting go.”

 

Dean’s hands brushed his arms. He left one of his hands on Sam’s thigh. 

 

Sam let Dean’s words stew. He wanted so badly to subscribe to what Dean had to say. He didn’t want to feel like a doll. 

 

God made him anew. Wasn’t that a miracle? Wasn’t he good, worthy?

 

“Do you forgive me?” Sam asked.

 

Dean’s face flashed with hurt, his brow furrowing. “I forgave you ages ago. The only times I was mad, I was scared. I forgave you every time you looked at me like you wanted to die. I just hate that I never got to say it.”

 

Sam nodded, blinking rapidly. He wasn’t exactly crying, but he was closer to grief than he thought he was capable of feeling. “You’re saying it now,” he said, and Dean gave him a watery smile. Sam returned it. 

 

They lived in that moment while the trees blew and the clouds moved. Dean hopped up, clapping Sam roughly on the back.

 

“It’s gettin’ cold,” Dean said. “Wanna head back?”

 

Sam stood up, rubbing his hands together. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”


	4. Chapter 4

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

The drive back home was weird. Sam didn’t exactly know what to do with this new information, with this truth about himself and how he came to be. He had a feeling that that “wall” around the remaining part of his original soul was responsible for the slight delay to his emotions, the bleached nature of it all.

 

Dean was quiet. He kept the radio on, and drove below the speed limit, watching the trees pass them by. 

 

By the time they got back to Bobby’s, it was late afternoon. Bobby’s car was gone from the front lot. Dean parked next to the empty space. 

 

Copper was there to greet them when they stepped inside. Sam pet her absentmindedly. 

 

Sam sat on the couch with Dean one room over making them a late lunch. Sandwiches, nothing fancy. He stared at Bobby’s study, scanning the old spines of books and the messy piles of possibly ancient parchment on his desktop. Empty bottles of Johnnie Walker on their sides.

 

The couch dipped beside him. Copper huffed and snuffed at his hand before spinning in a tight little circle and flopping down against his side. She put her head on Sam’s thigh, looking up at him with those soft eyes.

 

Sam pet her, slowly, carefully, making sure his touches were light and controlled. He was a little nervous around her, a little self-conscious, and he couldn’t help but think back to ninth grade English and Lennie Small.

 

“Sam!” Dean called. “Lunch.”

 

“I can’t get up,” Sam called back. Dean was there before he could elaborate, eyes wide, hands roaming, probing for injuries.

 

“I-it’s okay. It’s just, Copper’s here…” Sam trailed off, scritching Copper under the ear. Her tail wagged, hitting the couch. Fwap fwap fwap.

 

Dean’s head dropped. He looked up at Sam with an embarrassed smile, shaking his head. He held up a finger. “Don’t do that,” he said. 

 

Sam started to get up. Dean put a hand on his knee. “Stay put. Bobby won’t mind.”

 

Sam stayed. Copper’s head was soft.

 

Dean came back from the kitchen, plate in each hand. He dropped onto the couch on Sam’s other side. He handed Sam his sandwich. “Hold it up, like this, so she doesn’t get it,” he said while demonstrating. 

 

Sam held his plate up and ate little bites of his sandwich. Dean stuffed his face, “mmm”ing and moaning through mouthfuls of food.

 

About a third of the way through the sandwich, his stomach started protesting. After a short pause, Dean grabbed Sam’s sandwich, muttering about how olives were the devil’s work, and ate the rest of it. 

 

Dean took the dishes to the sink and rinsed them. He came back, wiping his hands on his pants, and clapped three times. Copper took her head off of Sam’s thigh, blinking up at Dean.

 

Sam yawned. 

 

“Alright, c’mon,” Dean said. “Let’s get started.”

 

Sam stretched his legs out, wiggling his toes. He sighed. His back hurt. He was starting to feel like a person with a body that had had it for a while. “On what?” he said, closing his eyes.

 

Dean ruffled his hair and Sam reached up to bat his hands away. “Nuh-uh, none of that,” Dean said. “Time to fix you up.”

 

“Not time to rest?” Sam asked, opening his eyes.

 

Dean shook his head. “You can rest later. Physical therapy now, stick boy. We’re not just at Bobby’s on vacation.”

 

Sam groaned, but stood, enjoying the way his pouty irritation made Dean so happy. “Fine.”

 

“Okay. First thing’s first…” Dean trailed off, rubbing his hands, sucking a breath in through his teeth. He looked around the room.

 

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

 

Dean glared at him. “Of course,” he said. “Let’s do a lap around the house, get your heart rate up. Starting now. Loser cleans the bathroom!”

 

Dean took off and Sam swore, stumbling forward and chasing him through the house to the back door, yanking his coat on as he went. Copper bolted off the couch, barking up a storm, keeping pace with Sam.

 

Sam burst into the chill just after Dean disappeared around the side of the house. Sam’s hand bumped along the uneven, peeling blue siding of the house as he ran, committing the texture to memory. He knocked some of the old rims of wheels nailed to the house with his hands, and they made a song. Sam had never asked Bobby why they were there.

 

Sam caught up with Dean near the Impala, but he was ninety percent sure Dean was slowing down for his benefit. Copper, meanwhile, was literally running circles around them, tongue hanging out and tail moving at a mile a minute.

 

Dean sprinted toward the junkyard, disappearing behind a lopsided tower of smushed sedans. Sam’s joints protested, but he pursued Dean, pushing himself from a jog into a run.

 

The cars stood up around him like a city of rust. They were organized in an odd, angular kind of maze, one that Sam knew like the veins running down his hand. Well, he didn’t know those veins, they were a stranger’s veins, but the point persisted.

 

He ran around a bend, ducking out of the way of a whale of a truck’s back end sticking out into the path, the bed filled with curled up leaves and frost. Dean disappeared around another corner several yards ahead, leaves crunching loudly underfoot, and Sam shook his head, going after him.

 

By the time he caught sight of Dean again, near the center of the labyrinth, Sam was out of breath, his legs going shaky, his ankles wobbling. His throat burned. He stumbled to a stop, leaning against a 1998 Previa in champagne, a beast that had been there since he was a baby. He panted.

 

Copper sat down beside him, also panting. Sam opened the sliding minivan door and sat down on the threshold. Dean reappeared from around a corner, searching for Sam. His head swung back and forth, brow creasing further and further until Sam coughed. Dean’s head whipped around. He jogged over.

 

Sam was still panting and coughing when Dean leaned against the car next to him. Sam watched him in the rear view mirror. 

 

“You wanna stop?” Dean wasn’t out of breath in the slightest.

 

Sam hunched over, wrapping his arms around his middle. He nodded.

 

Sam watched as Dean deliberated. He could see Dean reach the decision, a parent electing to put the candy bar back instead of buying it. “We’ll take a break, five minutes,” Dean said in a way that meant there was no room for argument. “Then we’ll do stuff other than cardio, maybe your legs.”

 

Sam nodded, still too winded and throat too sharp for him to speak. 

 

Dean nodded back, crossing his arms and staring out over the automobile graveyard. His eyes wandered to Copper. “She really likes you,” he said.

 

“Old souls club,” Sam said, voice a little raspy, and Dean blew some air out of his nose in an almost laugh.

 

Dean ended up giving him a little more than five minutes before they were up and on the move again. They walked back to the house, and Sam melted upon hitting the heated air inside. He hadn’t realized how stiff he’d gotten.

 

Dean swung his arms around, lips pursed exaggeratedly. “We’ll do weights,” he said. “I know Bobby’s got some somewhere.”

 

They looked on the main floor, but it wasn’t likely that Bobby would keep them in the kitchen, study, or mud room. They looked upstairs in all the bedrooms, but there was nothing of note. It felt weird stepping in Bobby’s room. They’d been barred from entering as children, and Sam still felt like he was doing something wrong when he glanced at Bobby’s nightstand and found a picture of his wife there.

 

“The basement, then,” Dean said. There was a workbench down there that would have something heavy, if not actual weights. Or they could go out to the shed and use Bobby’s car things. Maybe they could lift paint cans. Sam had a feeling he wouldn’t be upgrading to tires anytime soon.

 

Dean opened the door to the basement and Sam looked down into the long, narrow, dark space. He took a small step backward, biting his lip. Dean flicked the light on and went thundering down the stairs. Copper stayed at the top, barking down at him.

 

Sam followed after him, hurrying down. 

 

Dean turned the basement lights on. The stairs ended at a juncture, right or left. Dean turned left. The bare bulbs of the unfinished basement dimly illuminated a small workbench and a wall covered in tools. 

 

Dean sifted through it all, weighing things in his hands. Dean hefted a power drill. “Maybe this?” he said.

 

Sam shrugged. He would prefer not to lift anything, worried his arms would just pop off like Mr. Potato Head’s, but this was for Dean. “Anything works,” he said.

 

“Eh,” Dean said. He gave the drill a stern look, as though he was telling it how unsatisfactory he found it. He set it down and kept digging, through drawers and storage units.

 

Sam wandered. He hadn’t really spent much time down here, and all the little inklings he got were closed off, so he guessed he hadn’t been here much as a child, only later in life.

 

There was a cold sweat forming at the base of his spine and Sam decided to follow after the cause. He was going to rip the band aid right off. He knew the memories might hurt, might burn, even, but that was the point. Things only hurt if you were alive enough to feel them, he’d decided. 

 

Sam made it back to the stairway. He went right instead. 

 

He walked down a long, shadowed hallway. The walls were scratched and stained. The hall ended in a massive, metal door, like one for a bank vault or a fallout shelter.

 

Panic room, his brain supplied out of the fog of fear. It was called the panic room.

 

Sam moved toward it like he was walking through water, like he was floating through a dream. He was getting closer and closer to the wall holding him back from himself. He wondered what would happened when he hit it. Was he New Orleans facing breaking levees?

 

Dean yelled his name. Sam grabbed the hydraulic handle thing on the door and started turning it. It creaked and groaned until it made a small clicking sound. Sam pulled it with all his might, arms straining, and the door lurched open, spilling out cold air on Sam’s toes. 

 

Sam stared into the black. He reached inside, hand shaking. He half-braced himself for a slimy, sharp-toothed mouth to bite his fingers off. He fumbled for the switch, found it, and turned the lights on. 

 

The industrial-style fluorescents thunked on at once. The circular, iron chamber lit up, pentacle grate-covered fan pushing cold outside air down toward him. He shivered and stepped inside. 

 

The room had a single prison cot in the center, a desk, a storage unit, and a bucket. 

 

Sam sat down on the cot and was dunked underwater. Every muscle in his body froze as the memory poured over him, an unstoppable torrent.

 

There was--a--a person. Someone like him, but not him, who rocked back and forth, muttering to himself. The person held his arms around his middle. He was small with sunken, black eyes. He was twitchy, staring at random parts of the room and looking scared and furious and random, face contorting through emotions, well into the uncanny valley.

 

The man--the not Sam--looked up at an invisible someone and snarled. “I’m not her,” he said. “I’ll never be her again. She’s dead. Sorry, Dean.”

 

The words triggered another push, another layer deep into this person. He remembered Dean shoving her, knocking her on his ass. “You’re drinking blood, Sam!” Dean roared, eyes cold. “You’re a monster!”

 

The Sam on the floor pulsed with bright red hurt, and a switch flicked inside that Sam. She went from someone clinging to Dean, scared he’d leave again, to a shell, to a him that took it all, that believed every damning word Dean said and more, deserving of abandonment.

 

It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t feel real, except it felt more real than the greasy, awkward twelve year old boy that Sam had dozens of memories of. 

 

Who was she? Who was he? Weren’t they the same? How were they different? Why did Sam look at her and feel a huge, gaping hole in his very core, in his deepest center? Her eyes were different. They held something in them that his didn’t have. 

 

Light.


	5. Chapter 5

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

Sam came back to Earth about to throw up. Dean was standing over him, shaking him by the shoulders with a desperate violence akin to someone trying to jostle just one more meal out of a vending machine. Sam’s head bobbed back and forth, and he flailed, sticking his arms out, trying to do anything to make Dean stop.

 

“Sam!” Dean cried out. He stopped shaking Sam, but he kept his hands clinging tightly to Sam’s shoulders. He knelt so they were at eye level. “Jesus Christ, don’t scare me like that!”

 

“What-” Sam coughed. His mouth was so dry. He looked at Dean. Dean looked so old. “What happened?”

 

“You were checked out,” Dean said, tone raw and strung out and a little more vulnerable than usual. “You weren’t blinking, and you started to shake. You couldn’t breathe.”

 

Sam massaged his throat, blinking. He felt burnt all over--in his eyes, his throat, his arms. “I remembered,” he said.

 

Dean reared back, looking like he’d gotten punched to the gut. “You weren’t supposed to remember that,” he said.

 

Sam stood in a burst of righteous energy. “What do you think I saw?” he countered. “What aren’t I supposed to remember? Her?”

 

Dean stopped short, eyes filling with tears. Sam’s anger dissipated at the pain there. “I was talkin’ about hell,” he choked out. “You--you remember her?” 

 

“I’m…” Sam tried to find the words. “Who am I?” he asked, voice so small.

 

Dean came closer, rubbing a hand up and down Sam’s back. He laughed wetly. “Big question, buddy,” he said. 

 

“Why… am I... not her?” he asked.

 

“I can’t really answer that,” Dean said. “That’s all you.”

 

“But I don’t… I don’t feel it.” Sam swallowed, looking up at Dean with wide eyes. “I can’t reach it. It’s behind the wall.”

 

Dean swore under his breath. “That was only supposed to keep out the bad stuff. God said he built the wall to keep hell out.”

 

“I am hell,” Sam said. “You can’t separate muscle from bone.”

 

Dean was shaking his head before Sam was finished speaking. “No, he must’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I’ll call Cas, we’ll fix you right up.”

 

Sam shook his head right back. “That won’t work.”

 

“You don’t know that.”

 

“I told you. It’s one and the same.”

 

“Shut up,” Dean snapped, and Sam’s jaw snapped shut. 

 

Dean fell on the bed and Sam sat back down, too. They lapsed into silence. “We’ll work on it,” Dean eventually said. “You remembered something, right? Maybe it’ll come back in time, and other things will stay back. Maybe it’s like you said--chronological.”

 

“I guess,” Sam said, staring dully at his feet. He didn’t want to be trapped in this cage forever. 

 

Dean’s hand returned to his back. “You’ll see,” Dean murmured, trying and failing to inject confidence into his voice. “We’ll just test the waters. If we need to, we’ll do something, we’ll call someone. It’s still new.”

 

“It’s still new,” Sam echoed, like that meant anything.

 

Dean clapped him on the back. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

 

Sam smiled wryly at the word choice. He stood. They stepped out of the panic room, turning the lights off and shutting the door. Sam shivered. The headed up the stairs, and Copper was there, barking at them.

 

Back up on the main floor, surrounded by ambient sunlight, dust motes, and familiar objects, Sam felt like he was waking from hibernation piece by piece. He stretched his limbs, wandering over to the couch and dropping down into the coarse, worn fabric and tired springs. He could feel Dean’s eyes on him. He closed his eyes, zeroing in on the expansion and collapse of his lungs, the even pulse of his heartbeat, the small flutter of his eyelashes.

 

This was real. He was alive. Maybe he wasn’t like everyone else, but he bled. He knew because he’d bit his lip sometime during the memory. Copper, Copper, Copper. 

 

Dean let Copper out to do her business and refilled her food bowl. Dean went and cleaned the bathroom while Sam rebooted. The world was silent until a rumbling noise grew gradually closer. Copper was barking outside, an excited noise. 

 

The rumbling stopped, and Dean walked outside. Sam heard raised voices. Bobby was back. 

 

The voices dropped. They were undoubtedly talking about him. He couldn’t blame them. He stood up, knees cracking. Dean, Bobby, and Copper walked back in, one by one. Bobby tipped his hat at Sam. “Good day?” he asked.

 

“So-so,” Sam answered, because Bobby already knew. Bobby nodded.

 

Bobby set a few full grocery bags on the kitchen table. “Still cleaning up a poltergeist one county over,” he said by way of explanation. “But I got some groceries on the way back. Thought you might want some chili.”

 

Another memory hit Sam, nothing potent, just him as an elementary school-aged kid chowing down on Bobby’s famous spicy chili. Sam grinned. “Sounds good.” Sounds normal, he meant, which was something he was beginning to crave fiercely. There was something annoyingly familiar about the sensation. 

 

He and Dean helped Bobby reshelve some of his books on poltergeists while Bobby started cooking dinner. It wasn’t even five-thirty (November third, twenty-seventeen, his name was Sam, he didn’t know who he was, but he was Dean’s, and he wasn’t really okay), but Sam was damn hungry. He wasn’t about to complain.

 

Bobby’s books were organized by subject and by author’s last name, alphabetical. Scanning the shelves for the right place to put a solid, comforting-smelling book was therapeutic. Sam let the time pass however it wanted to while he cleaned the space up, one little object at a time.

 

Before long, the scent of chili was overwhelming, and Sam was salivating. He’d learned in school long ago that smell was one of the strongest senses, and he believed it. The smell of chili combined with the stale dust being pushed around by reshelving books was a potent and familiar mix. Sam was bombarded- albeit gently- with memory after memory of a child in this place, a child left by their father, waiting for him to come back.

 

Bobby had had other dogs through the years. Bobby had liked to play chess with Sam, and they were an even match by the time Sam was eight. Dean awkwardly gave the talk to Sam. Coming from a fifteen year old who had seen a bit too much, it was a little funny in hindsight, and definitely poorly timed. Little Sam had been so clueless about the magazine Dean had handed him.

 

Sam realized he’d been staring into space and smiling lopsidedly when Dean nudged him. Dean gave him a look, confused but amused, eyebrows wiggling in that stupid way, and Sam couldn’t help but smile wider, despite all the things roiling around inside him.

 

“Just remembered a few things,” Sam said by way of explanation. Dean tilted his head, waiting for more. Sam loosely shrugged a shoulder. “Chess with Bobby… the talk with you.”

 

It took Dean about half a second to process Sam’s words and remember it, too, but once he did, he was throwing his head back, wincing and covering his smile with his knuckles. “I probably only have myself to blame for how your record with flirting turned out,” he said.

 

Sam shook his head. “Oh, you definitely do.”

 

Dean gave him a look then, something Sam’s memory library of all things Dean didn’t have categorized and defined. It was still happy, still good, but his eyes were narrowed, like they were sharing a secret. Sam looked over at Bobby. Bobby turned the burner off on the stove and turned around, leaning against the counter. “Dinner’s ready.”

 

Dean swept up the last few books and shoved them onto the end of the shelf together before standing, grunting like an old man. They walked over to the table together and sat side-by-side. The table was old and small and knees were knocking all over the place. Not to mention the crafty Copper, who was slipping between their legs, closely monitoring for any fallen food or scraps.

 

Sam tried to turn his brain off during dinner. He didn’t want any new memories, didn’t want to think about what happened in the panic room, didn’t want to decipher Dean’s odd looks he kept shooting Sam. 

 

He focused on the taste of chili on his tongue. He was sure he liked it as a kid but it was way too spicy for his new tongue. It was still good, though, he just had to wipe his eyes every other bite and chug milk like his life depended on it. 

 

He was kneeling in front of the toilet less than thirty minutes later, with Dean holding his hair back. Sam retched one more time, and it was just bile. He coughed. His throat was even worse now. His knees had ached and complained before this particular incident but kneeling on the tile floor was not helping matters at all. His whole body was one big throb.

 

“Guess we were a little overzealous back there,” Dean said, bending forward to flush the toilet, his tummy pressing up against Sam’s back. Dean leaned back again. His fingers ran through Sam’s hair.

 

Sam rested his forehead against the porcelain and closed his eyes. He’d only had two glasses of milk and half of a bowl of chili, but his stomach was still shrunken. 

 

His mouth watered again, and he leaned forward. Instead of puking, though, he just coughed over and over again, each one sounding more like sandpaper. He was fucking his throat up pretty impressively, he could tell. 

 

A sharp little headache was building right between his eyebrows. Sam sat up and pinched his temple, eyes still closed. Dean’s hands left his hair. He missed them. 

 

“Want something for that?” Dean asked.

 

“Yeah,” Sam said. Rattled, more like.

 

Dean got up and went through the medicine cabinet. He came back to Sam with two little pills and a glass of water. Sam swallowed them down without question, wincing at the way they irritated his throat. 

 

Sam stood up. His vision went gray and he wavered a bit, but the spell faded. Dean touched his arm. “I’m good,” he said, and repeated himself at Dean’s dubious look. 

 

They stayed in their room for the rest of the night, only opening the door to use the bathroom or to let Copper in when she whined and pawed at the door. When it got dark, they heard Bobby piddling about downstairs, answering phones, doing research, checking the wards and sigils around the house to make sure they were still fine and dandy.

 

It was comforting. If there was thing Sam valued, it was routine. It was a way to carve sanity out of the insane. 

 

Earlier, Bobby had set up a big ol’ CRT on their dresser, so Sam and Dean watched movies in bed. Dean kept an arm looped around Sam’s shoulders, but his arm dropped lower as Indiana Jones ran from more shit and beat up more Nazis. 

 

About halfway through the movie, just when Indy has discovered the Well of Lost Souls, Dean’s fingers squeezed Sam’s hip and Dean tilted his head, his nose brushing the hair by Sam’s temple. “Do you remember what we talked about?” he asked, voice a little breathy. 

 

Dean’s face was right there so Sam just kept watching the movie. “When?” he asked, dropping his voice to match Dean’s level.

 

“About flirting?” Dean said, and oh, Sam knew what that tone meant, cheeks heating up just as Dean kissed them. Dean nosed Sam’s face and nibbled at his jaw.

 

Sam went still. “Dean,” he said, so carefully, very carefully, “what are you doing?”

 

Dean’s reaction was immediate. He pulled away, unwrapping himself from Sam. Indy was making a big speech on screen. “Please don’t tell me…” Dean’s voice was faint. Sam watched out of the corner of his eye as Dean scrubbed a hand down his face. Dean was having trouble keeping himself together. He finally looked back at Sam, and Sam looked at Dean head-on. “You don’t remember?”

 

Sam would have sworn something like that would’ve been seared onto his brain, but he apparently had no idea who he really was, he was maybe someone else, someone happier, so it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that this important little tidbit would have not made it past the purge. He shook his head. 

 

Dean laughed, but it wasn’t a kind or gentle thing. “Jesus Christ,” Dean said. “It’s like God bought you from Ikea but forgot all the screws!”

 

Sam’s nostrils flared. “I want to remember,” he snapped. “I want to know, okay?”

 

“I know! I know,” Dean controlled himself more with each word. “I’m not blaming you, I just--sometimes you’re there, and sometimes you’re not.”

 

Nothing could have Sam felt more alone than that sentence. He shrank back against the headboard, silent. He couldn’t really contest that. Dean was right, after all. He wasn’t all there. It was a dizzying, shaky feeling that wouldn’t leave him, like the edge that happens seconds after waking from a nightmare, but instead constant, never fading. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Dean said over the sound effects and stunts of  _ Raiders _ . “It’s hard for you, too.”

 

“It’s okay,” Sam said. He wasn’t really mad at Dean. He couldn’t be. And this Dean… something here conflicted with his memories. He wasn’t trying to insult Dean or anything, but the Dean of his memories hid his softer side more often than letting it out to play, and getting him to apologize was like pulling teeth. This Dean had been here for him, remaining patient, almost like they were kids again. He couldn’t blame Dean. “I don’t want you to lie. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

 

“Yeah, well, it’s usually bad,” Dean sighed. “And I don’t think your thoughts are much better.”

 

Sam bobbed his head in acquiescence. “True,” he said. “But it’s still important.”

 

“Let’s just watch the movie,” Dean said. 

 

There was still so much unsaid, a whole mountain of problems. “Okay,” Sam said, grabbing up the blankets. Dean scooted a little closer, and Sam relaxed fractionally, but Dean’s arm didn’t return to Sam’s waist. 

 

They watched the rest of the movie in silence. Sam missed Dean’s little comments. The concept of someone who talked during movies was infuriating but Dean was endearing when he did it. 

 

Sam fell asleep sometime during the credits, and woke when Dean crept out of bed and turned the T.V. off. Dean helped him out of his jeans and socks before moving to the other bed and curling up on his side. Sam stared at the ceiling, wondering what the hell had just happened--wondering what the hell in general, really--until his eyelids couldn’t support themselves and he drifted.


	6. Chapter 6

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

The day that followed what Sam had dubbed “the ordeal” was weird. Sam’s body ached like a bitch from the workout yesterday. Dean would leave him alone, but inevitably kept coming back and checking up on him. He’d pretend to not be checking up on him by digging through drawers or muttering to himself about some chore. 

 

Dean mentioned another workout session, but Sam’s entire body felt like overcooked noodles so it never happened. It took an insane amount of energy just for Sam to clomp down the steps, one at a time, leaning heavily on the railing. 

 

Copper began to feel like his service animal. When he was feeling poorly, or moving slowly, she followed after him, or pressed against the side of his leg, looking up at him with a goofy, hopeful look that made him smile every time.

 

If Sam were being honest with himself, Copper was the only reason Sam wasn’t splattered all over the walls. Bobby was only there part of the time, working on some mysterious hunt, but when he was home, he treated Sam like porcelain.

 

Dean was even worse. Dean was in pain and Sam didn’t know what to do to help. He didn’t think Dean wanted to see him. He needed time. He was grieving over something--over someone who was Sam but wasn’t--and Sam couldn’t really touch that.

 

He was useless. He was worse than useless. Even in the few, vague memories he had of being laid up in bed, at least he could talk with Dean, at least he could offer some form of help or support, calling Dad on the phone and reading passages from a book about wraiths to help him solve a case. 

 

Now, though, he couldn’t hunt, couldn’t do anything, couldn’t even talk to Dean. It didn’t work. Every time he opened his mouth, Dean just shuttered himself further and further away, made himself scarce for longer periods of time. 

 

Dean had a serious advantage, too. Sam had gone looking for him once, with cliche, awkward words of comfort hanging practiced in his mouth like dry cotton, but he hadn’t found him. Dean remembered this place in perfect detail. He knew the ins and outs. For all Sam knew, there were secret hallways in the walls like in H. H. Holmes’ murder house.

 

Jesus. That name triggered another memory, fuzzy, blurred, and painful, put behind the wall.

 

Sam had no control over the wall, over the filter, over what his brain was doing, but he couldn’t help feeling endlessly frustrated at himself despite knowing that. 

 

Around lunch, Sam was restless and fed up. He went to the kitchen and got a little container of diced peaches out of the refrigerator. He ate about half of it before he started to feel queasy. 

 

He leaned against the counter and heard the back door creak open. He tensed for half a second before he recognized the particular thump of boots on hardwood and relaxed. Dean came in from down the hall with his bowlegged gait. 

 

Dean was tired and hunched over but straightened up when he caught sight of Sam. Dean looked like he was about to say something, but thought better of it. Dean headed toward the fridge and Sam scooted out of the way. Dean got out a beer and cracked it open on the edge of the counter. 

 

Sam expected Dean to take the drink and run, but Dean lingered, wandering over to the window by the door and peering at a sleeping Copper through the screen. 

 

Sam cleared his throat and drew up all his strength. Dean turned back to look at him, face neutral and waiting. 

 

“Are you…” Sam tried. He shook his head, frustrated. He kept to his little corner, watching Dean. “I mean… is there anything I can do?”

 

He tried to look honest but felt like an embarrassment. Dean walked closer and set the beer on the counter. 

 

“Don’t do that,” Dean said quietly.

 

Sam swallowed. “Do what?” he asked.

 

Dean gestured at him vaguely. “Don’t act like one of Bobby’s rescues.”

 

Sam didn’t have a response for that. At his confused look, Dean elaborated. “Bobby adopts grown dogs that no one else wants. The fucked up ones. For the first few weeks, they just hide and shake and shrink back. Copper used to stumble backward and howl if you raised a hand around her. Don’t… look so timid. I’m not pissed at you.”

 

Sam was shrinking back into the corner of the counter. He stood up straighter and looked Dean in the eye. 

 

Dean didn’t look comforted. He grabbed his beer and took another drink, heading out of the kitchen.

 

Sam stepped forward. “Wait,” he said, heart fluttering in anxiety. “Just wait.”

 

Dean stopped under the threshold between the kitchen and the hallway, but didn’t turn and look back at Sam. 

 

Sam loathed how helpless I felt. “Is there anything I can do?” he repeated, a little louder. 

 

“Is there anything you can-” Dean started to repeat him. Dean spun around to look at him, shaking his head. “You’re the fucked up one.”

 

Sam dropped his head.

 

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean said. Sam looked up. Dean went and sat on the couch in the study. Sam sat on the arm of the couch, weight still centered on his feet, like he might need to get up and run at any moment. He watched Dean’s throat as he swallowed.

 

The more of the beer Dean drank, the looser his limbs got. “I just meant that I should be the one doing things for you,” Dean elaborated. It took Sam a moment to remember where their conversation left off a minute ago. “You shouldn’t have to ask that. I shouldn’t be avoiding you, either.”

 

Sam stared down at his hands. “It’s okay.”

 

“No, it’s not,” Dean said. “Look, I’m just--you said you didn’t remember and I--it hurt.”

 

Sam could tell it had taken serious effort for Dean to get all that out. Sam looked over at him and Dean looked up. For a beat, they just shared a look, empathizing with the waves of unique misery coming off of both of them. 

 

“Was that a--a big part of us?” Sam asked. “We…” He didn’t know how to finish that thought.

 

Dean flopped his neck back against the pillows. “The fact you have to ask,” he rasped, staring up at the ceiling, eyes going distant in some poignant memory. 

 

Out of nowhere, Dean came alive, sitting upright and heaving himself off of the couch, pacing in agitated little circles in the middle of the room.

 

“Do you know how long I dreamed about you coming back?” Dean asked. Sam stayed silent, knowing Dean didn’t really want a response. “I fantasized about it all the time. I knew I shouldn’t, that you weren’t coming back, that I was just fucking myself up further, but I did it anyway.”

 

A bitter smile curled up at the corner of Dean’s lips. “I thought about just seein’ you somewhere, you know? Like I’d walk out the front door and you’d be leaning against the lamp post across the street. And I’d walk over to you and I’d be scared I’d gone insane but you’d smile, you’d smile in that way that was only for me where your eyes narrowed ‘cause you were happy, and we’d wrap up in each other, and we’d go slow, ‘cause we just found each other again, but I’d kiss you right there and everything would be okay again. I’d have you and we’d be back to normal and you’d be fucking happy and I could look after you again.”

 

Dean was out of breath by the end of it. It sapped him of all his energy, and when he finished, he sat down in the middle of the floor, putting his head in his hands. 

 

Sam’s throat felt full. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could do but stare. Dean’s pain hurt. His own emptiness burned inside him. He watched Dean rub at his eyes and blink tiredly. 

 

Dean shook his head against his palm. “Was that a big part of us,” he repeated, muttering. “Sammy, that was all of us.”

 

Sam stood up, knees cracking. He was just made of walls and nothing else, he thought as he built another one up. “I’m not really here, then,” he said, sounding hollow even to his own ears. Dean looked up at him, up, up, up. 

 

“I don’t remember that, we don’t have that, I’m not her, and you don’t have her, so I’m not really here,” Sam said. The words kept getting caught in his throat but he managed to choke them all out. “I’m sorry.”

 

Dean said his name, said something else after that, but Sam wasn’t listening. He needed to escape, needed to clear his head, needed to just get away from all of it for a moment, and hiding up in his tower wasn’t going to do at the moment. 

 

He stumbled through the house, pushing out the back door without a second thought. It clattered against the frame as he strode across the yard and entered the wild, untamed field behind Bobby’s property.

 

The grasses were tall here, and yellowed and tough in the late fall. They hissed as he passed through. He picked burrs off the ends of his shirt as he walked, flicking them into the field. After a few moments of half-jogging, more hissing joined his, and something brushed against his leg.

 

He looked down at Copper and she looked up at him. Sam kept moving. A rescue, he thought. She was a rescue. She’d been through hell. Sam was just Bobby’s latest rescue. 

 

He walked and walked and walked until he was about to drop. He’d barely walked a hundred yards and yet his leg muscles were screaming. The field stretched ahead of him for hundreds more yards. He found a scrawny little Ash tree that offered a little bit of shade, a little shelter from the big sky. 

 

He sat at the tree’s roots in a little spot where the grasses didn’t grow as tall. He wrapped his jacket closely around his middle. Copper came over and plopped down right in his lap, wiggling closer. He brought his arms around her, grateful for the warmth and companionship.

 

He leaned back against the rough bark of the tree, closing his eyes. He allowed himself to simply feel--not emotions but visceral sensations. He didn’t want emotions. He heard the wind in the leaves and the grasses. Somewhere far off, a windchime made of junk on Bobby’s porch jangled. The cold ached in the tips of his ears and the tip of his nose. Copper was breathing loudly, whuffing as she tried to get comfortable atop Sam’s bony legs. Other than that, it was silent. Too late in autumn for bugs and birds, save for crows.

 

He opened his eyes for a couple of seconds just to check his watch. November fourth, twenty-seventeen, two forty-eight P.M. His name was Sam, but he didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t Dean’s. The topic of whether he was okay or not was laughable.

 

His hair blew around and got in his face when the wind picked up. In the distance, Bobby’s gutters rattled and the trees in the forest across the field groaned. A crow cawed.

 

Sam let out a breath. He looked down at his hands. They weren’t like Dean’s. They were long and spidery instead of big and sure, but more than that, they weren’t calloused. They weren’t scarred. They didn’t bear the signs of a life lived, they didn’t mirror the few memories Sam had.

 

He had no idea what his hands had gotten up to. In theory, they’d killed, they’d scrabbled for purchase in a difficult life, they’d even wrought pleasure out of another.

 

Sam stared at the heartlines on his hands. Were they the same as before, or were they new ones?

 

The blank page that came up every time he tried to remember something important was infuriating. In a dangerous way, he’d begun to crave that electric shock from the Detroit memory, that inescapable nausea from the memories in the panic room.

 

He didn’t know what breaking the wall meant for him. Were those memories so potent that he’d become a vegetable, or unstable, or worse? That broken shell that Dean spoke about, was that his inevitable fate? Was he nothing without the parts of Dean within him, without the duct tape holding him together, without the convenient little barrier in the very center of his identity?

 

Could he live like this? Could he just scrape together a new person, and live with Dean like this? Would Dean grieve him, grieve her, and adjust? Or would Dean keep waiting for someone else to come home?

 

Sam bit his lip, shuddering. He knew the answer to that last question. He knew the answers to all of them. 

 

Tears came unbidden to his eyes. It just wasn’t fair. He didn’t want Dean to look at him every day and feel his heart restrict. Dean didn’t deserve that.

 

Selfishly, he didn’t want Dean to think about anyone else. He wanted to be Dean’s all. That, at least, was a part of him that remained. He was supposed to be Dean’s. And yet, and yet.

 

Sam stood up. Copper whined, pawing at his knee. He stared out at the field from behind tear-blurred eyes, grasses moving all together in a mesmerizing wave. 

 

He made up his mind, resolve hardening, hands curling into fists. 

 

He had to at least try. It was the least he could do for himself and for Dean.

 

A plan slowly formulated in his mind as he loped back home, at a much slower pace than before. Copper kept pace with him, silent. Just there. He reached down to scratch her behind her ear and her tail wagged.

 

Sam opened the back door and stepped back inside just as three thirty hit. The whole first floor was empty. 

 

Sam toed out of his boots and wandered around, rubbing warmth back into his icy hands. Copper left him and he could hear her lapping up water in the mud room. Other than that, nothing.

 

Sam’s half eaten fruit cup was still on the counter. He put one more piece in his mouth before putting it back in the fridge. He made to leave but turned back at the last moment and took a beer out of the fridge, tucking it under his arm as he climbed the stairs.


	7. Chapter 7

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

He stopped outside of the door to his and Dean’s room.

 

He stared at the wood panels and his resolve hardened. He grabbed the door handle and crept in slowly, peeking around the frame of the door. Dean was sitting at the desk and sharpening a knife on a sharpening block. Shhhk, shhhhk, shhhhhk.

 

Sam kicked the door closed and Dean looked up for a moment before returning to his work. He drew the edge of the blade across the stone with a little more force than strictly necessary. Sparks flashed. “Where were you?” he asked.

 

“Just out back,” Sam said. “Copper was there with me.”

 

Dean didn’t look up or pause in his task. “Good.”

 

Sam lumbered over, legs still a little shaky, and held the beer out, forcing it into Dean’s direct line of sight. Dean set the knife down and looked up at Sam for a brief moment before taking the beer. He cracked it open and took a swig. “Thanks.”

 

Sam didn’t respond. He may not remember every step of the dance they were doing, but he knew his parting words to Dean hadn’t been the prettiest, and Dean was going to let something out sooner or later.

 

He went to the bureau instead. Dean got the top two drawers, and he got the bottom two. Maybe something there would reveal important but not dangerous memories.

 

He tugged open the top drawer of his, wood groaning on wood. He looked down at an inordinate amount of plaid. He sifted through the layers of folded shirts, worn fabric brushing against his hands. Some boxer briefs, some socks, black and white pairs. It was only clothes. He pat the shirts back down to right the mess he made. Something crackled under his palm. 

 

He reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out something crumpled up into a ball. He smoothed it out against his leg. It was a receipt. Sip and Squeeze Smoothies, it read. April 29, 2010. One chocolate shake, one “health nut every fruit blend,” with extra protein. Huh. 

 

At the bottom, in Dean’s writing, in pen: YOU’RE A SORE LOSER. LOSER.

 

Sam worried the smooth paper between his thumb and forefinger. He got up and went to Dean’s side. He put the wrinkled receipt on the desk before Dean. Dean peered down at it, squinting like an old man. Sam put his finger by Dean’s handwriting. “What’s this from?” he asked.

 

Dean chewed at the inside his cheek, brows furrowed in thought. “I don’t-” His face grew into a fond smile. “Oh, yeah.”

 

Sam waited. Dean picked up the paper, rubbing at it just like Sam had. Sam gave him a look, and Dean cleared his throat. “We played a game of strip poker,” Dean said. “Winner chose dinner. I won, in more ways n’ one ‘cause you looked so good, but the place I chose had you on the toilet for hours. I felt bad so I went to your favorite smoothie place. But not bad enough to write that.”

 

Sam smiled. It was a nice memory. Dean was smiling, too.

 

Dean’s smile dropped away. He cleared his throat. “It was kind of a shitty time in our lives and we--we hadn’t done that in a long time, so it was one last good thing before shit hit the fan.”

 

Sam lost his smile, too. “I don’t-”

 

Dean looked down at his lap. “I don’t blame you,” he said. “I know why you did it. You only ever did things because you were a good person. That’s more than I can say.” Dean shook his head.

 

God. Sam didn’t even know what Dean was forgiving him for. The darkness, the guilt he felt, the vague badness before hell… he didn’t know. Sam bit back a syllable, letting a little noise slip. Dean looked at him worriedly, about to ask something. “Don’t--” Sam could barely manage to speak. “Don’t talk about me like I’m dead.”

 

Dean’s mouth clicked shut. He stood up, receipt falling to the ground. “Sammy-”

 

“Please,” Sam interjected. “Not now, okay? I can’t. I just can’t.”

 

Sam’s legs chose that moment to tap out, and he fell back onto the edge of his bed. Dean’s hand touched his back. The bed dipped at his side.

 

“Hey.” Dean’s voice, off to his left, was low. Dean spread his palm out across Sam’s spine. “I’m sorry.”

 

Sam shook his head. He didn’t look up. He didn’t want sorry. He had a thousand different things to say--I just want to be me, I just want to remember, I don’t want it to be like this, I want you to want me--but he kept them all inside. 

 

“Hey, c’mon,” Dean murmured. The hand on Sam’s back disappeared, and then an arm wrapped around him and tugged him close. “Hush, c’mon.”

 

Sam went easily into Dean’s embrace. He turned and buried his face in the crook of Dean’s neck, hiding his tears in Dean’s shirt collar. He took a shuddering breath, inhaling the scent of Dean, of sweat and laundry detergent. Dean’s arm squeezed his hip. 

 

He wrapped his arms around Dean’s middle, and they stayed like that for a long time, just holding onto each other, rocking slightly. Sam avoided the world for a while, putting everything on hold in favor of just breathing, of the sensation of Dean’s pulse thumping under soft skin against his nose.

 

He lifted his head, resting it on Dean’s shoulder, looking out the window without really seeing. Dean’s hand rubbed at his arm.

 

Sam rubbed at a tiny headache building behind his eyebrow with his finger. “Tell me more about that memory,” he said.

 

Dean took a breath. He took a moment, shifting a bit. “Well,” he said. “We were having a lot of disagreements, the world was fucked, but we’d just finished a simple case, just a haunted house, and things felt like normal for a second. So we just… pretended it was. Our problems could wait.”

 

Sam closed his eyes. He made a humming sound. He could relate. He tried to paint a picture of them then in his head. It was probably completely wrong, with all the important features just a little bit off, but it was all he had.

 

Dean’s fingers danced a little spider dance up and down Sam’s side as Dean spoke. His voice had a smoother quality to it as he went on, lost in some memory. A better time Sam couldn’t relate to. No. He’d let himself enjoy this.

 

“So, strip poker, obviously,” Dean was saying with a little laugh. “Bobby and I always made fun of you for being shit at poker, but you beat that crazy Irish fucker, so I wadn’t playing around. It was pretty neck n’ neck for a while, but I got you drunk, which made it easy. Then you started taking off layers without prompting. It was against the rules, but I wasn’t gonna stop you.”

 

Sam smiled. He had no concrete memories of it, but he remembered the sensation of drunkness. It was a gamble with him, really. Sometimes, he was a happy, clingy, atypically sexual drunk, but most of the time, he was a sad drunk, getting emotional over small things, like a dirty stuffed toy on the side of the highway.

 

“So, you, uh… you were down to your socks and you lost. So off they went. I really wanted to, and so did you, clearly, heh, so I teased you. Made you wait.” Dean pressed a hand between his legs and cleared his throat. “Anyway, I ordered Mexican food. We dug in. Naked. Footsie. But, uh… definitely an oversight.” Dean coughed. “You locked yourself in the bathroom and I felt like shit. So I helped you into your PJs, drugged you, and let you sleep off the hangover. When you woke up all cranky and embarrassed, I went and got you smoothies. We were even. But I still had to write the note to let you know what a dorky little sister you were.”

 

Dean went quiet at the same moment Sam pulled in a breath. He couldn’t help the immediate feeling that it wasn’t him. That entire memory, those cobbled-up, younger people he had imagined in his head while Dean spoke, they… they just weren’t who was really there, down to the pronoun.

 

Sam’s eyes were already shut, but he scrunched them shut tighter, trying to concentrate. He wanted to picture her. He wanted to hear Dean’s laugh, feel the poker chip under his fingers. Fingers with callouses and scars. He wanted to feel the hope and depression stirring inside her. Inside… not him, not himself, but her, herself, her, who was he, who was she, damn it, okay?

 

That was who Dean loved, and Sam wanted to be that person.

 

The entrance into the memory was sudden and violent, even more so than when he was in the panic room.

 

His own memory matched Dean’s, but he…

 

She plunged ever deeper.

 

She was so desperate, though she hid it well, she thought, and the beer helped her hide it. She hadn’t seen most of that year, only him. It had been rough times only. Now, though, they were both smiling, they were close, just like old times, and here she was. After being kept on the shelf for so long. For maybe forever.

 

She smiled at Dean over her cards. It wasn’t a good poker face, but she didn’t care. Dean was smiling back, anyway, so it was fine.

 

She raised. Her cards sucked. She pushed the chips into the center of the table, and Dean took them. “Alright,” he said, tongue sticking out as he gestured to her with his free hand. “Rules are rules.”

 

She shook her head, trying to act put upon, but she was happy to do it. She wanted to see that look in his eyes, craved it. Missed it. It was just for her. She wanted it back. 

 

She slowly unbuttoned her flannel shirt, keeping eye contact with Dean as she went, eyes lidded. It slipped off one shoulder, revealing her undershirt. She undid the last button and the shirt fell around her hips. She wiggled out of it in one fluid moment, sighing and rolling her shoulders. She put her hands in her lap, head bent, looking up at Dean from under her hair. Picture of innocence, she hoped. A virtue she’d long clawed out of herself.

 

Dean’s eyes were just as lidded. He swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing. His lips curved up into a small, wry smile. He fanned himself with his cards. Sam took a breath. “Shall we?” he said.

 

Oh, hell yes, Sam thought, her heart racing. I’m not losing you, not this time, so I have to lose.


	8. Chapter 8

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

Sam gasped. He couldn’t breathe. His eyes fluttered rapidly. He keeled forward, falling ungracefully off the bed. Dean swore and went down with him. Sam clung to the front of Dean’s shirt, wheezing loudly. 

 

His entire body was trembling, was afire. The headache pushing against his forehead was bad enough to make any light hurt. It was surely on its way to a fully-fledged migraine. Something in his head was reacting violently to the memory, alarms blaring, pain seizing him, burning through it, destroying it.

 

No. One huge push of determination and want and pain surged through him. No. The wall couldn’t take that from him. Wouldn’t. 

 

“I… remember,” Sam ground out, willing the words to make it permanent. “I remember that.”

 

“You do?” Dean said, and there was so much hope there it hurt. “Wait--fuck. I don’t care, Sammy. I don’t care. You don’t need to remember if it hurts. You’re my Sam, okay? Not… her. Not even him from before. Just you, I promise. You hearing me?”

 

Sam hissed, shaking his head. Sam was all of them, especially her, and he had to remember. He had to keep it. 

 

The headache flared larger, going supernova, and he melted into Dean’s arms. Dean was saying something, loudly, rapid-fire, definitely in a rising panic. He knew Dean was asking him something, was asking something of him, but he couldn’t answer.

 

The pain quickly grew unbearable, rising to a bright pitch that even the most seasoned veteran would crumble in the face of. It cut all at once, but so did everything else.

 

Sam turned off, and Dean held him, pulling him close and keeping him safe.

 

***

 

Sam woke up with the worst hangover ever. It must’ve been all that stupid beer. Ugh, and the delivery food hadn’t helped, either--

 

The door opened. Sam watched Dean walk in. He wasn’t holding any smoothies, and they weren’t in any motel. The curtains had been drawn in their room in Bobby’s house so the light wouldn’t hurt Sam’s eyes.

 

He could still remember it. He could remember being her.

 

It was kind of funny. He’d expected it to feel so different, to have this wash of warmth and love and Dean that tinted her memories rose-colored, but it didn’t. He felt exactly like himself. He felt exactly like herself. 

 

He couldn’t discern what triggered any difference. He didn’t think it was just happiness--he would’ve been her at least once since he was brought back. Or maybe keeping her memories behind the wall was stopping him from being her at all. It was hurting his already aching brain so he let it drop.

 

Dean sat on the edge of the bed. He felt Sam’s forehead. He was holding a glass of water, and he set it on the nightstand. “You feeling any better?”

 

Sam nodded, licking his dry lips. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Thanks.”

 

Dean hid his relief by helping Sam sit up right, face obscured by Sam’s shoulder as he got his arms under Sam’s armpits and hauled him up against the headboard. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Advil?”

 

Sam nodded, and Dean handed him the pills and then the water without comment. Sam swallowed it all down without much of a fuss, and Dean took the glass back from him and set it on the nightstand. Dean lingered, knee jiggling. Sam waited for him to speak and waited for the pain pills to kick in. 

 

“I meant what I said last night,” Dean said, raising his head and staring at the far wall. “I don’t care who you are. I care about you. You, right here, right now. So, just… don’t sweat it, okay? I know I freaked out and all, but it just takes time. Like I said, we’ll work on it.”

 

“We’ll work on it,” Sam echoed, not knowing how he felt about that, not knowing how much Dean believed in what he was saying or how much he grieved for her and those intimate moments together. 

 

Dean peered at him, gauging his reaction. “Okay?”

 

Sam bobbed his head. With foal-weak arms he batted the comforter away from his lap. “Okay.”

 

Dean helped him get ready for the day. Sam quickly grew tired of having hands hovering an inch above him at all times. He was allowed to brush his teeth by himself. The memory and resulting episode, coupled with the exercise, had done a number on him, though, so Dean came back and helped him dress and brush his hair. 

 

They trotted down the stairs together, old wood creaking and making a general ruckus. Copper barked from somewhere else in the house, and a moment later there she was, standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking up at them, barking and wagging her tail.

 

Leaning heavily against the railing, taking the steps one at a time, Sam smiled lopsidedly down at her. “Hey, Copper,” he said, clearing his throat past the gunk. 

 

Bobby came from down the hall a moment later. “There you two are,” he grouched. “It’s almost eleven.”

 

“Sorry,” Sam said at the same moment Dean did. Dean put a light hand on Sam’s shoulder while Sam slowly made his way down the stairs. 

 

“Just sleeping off a headache,” Dean said, and Sam could tell by the lightning quick but intense worried looks the two of them swapped that Dean had filled in Bobby while he slept. 

 

At the final step, he bent down and pet Copper. She licked at his hand. Sam wondered how much Bobby knew. Had Bobby ever knowingly met her? Was he as zen about the confusing and mysterious nature of Sam’s gender as Dean was? 

 

Was Sam out? That was what it boiled down to. He loved Bobby, but he honestly had no idea if Bobby knew all that much about gender and sexuality. If John were alive--Jesus Christ. Sam didn’t want to think about it. Dad loved him, but he was a little behind on the times. Dean had inherited some of that, and Sam had been quick to lecture it out of him.

 

Sam grimaced. He had a few holier-than-thou memories, but he thought he was entitled to them, considering the hidden hurt behind them, the fear of Dean never getting it.

 

But Dean did. Bobby could, right? Where were Sam’s conveniently-timed memories now?

 

“Sammy?” Dean said, and Sam looked up from Copper’s mesmerizing autumnal fur. 

 

“Yeah?”

 

The look Dean had on his face said Sam had zoned out. He straightened, putting his listening ears on. “Breakfast?”

 

Sam smiled as his stomach rumbled. “Sounds good,” he said.

 

So breakfast it was, Bobby grumbling about messy boys all the way to the kitchen.

 

***

 

Sam was able to eat one entire scrambled egg without feeling queasy. He was fully prepared for sickness to hit him abruptly throughout the entire day, but it never happened. 

 

He could still feel those pesky mountains of unresolved bullshit lurking over his shoulders, but it was never brought up. Bobby had finally finished the hunt with the poltergeist, and now that he was home again, he had several chores for them to attend to. In a way, it was the most normal thing Sam had done since coming here, so he didn’t really mind.

 

He did feel a bit guilty, though, considering Dean did the brunt of the work. If Sam stood for too long, or lifted something too heavy, his body and his headache protested. 

 

Right now, they were in Bobby’s garage, working on the transmission of a car that had just come into the auto shop. Some neighbor woman didn’t know what was wrong with the car, so she brought it to Bobby, and Dean was fixing it. Sam was perched on a stool nearby acting as an assistant.

 

“Allen wrench,” Dean said, bent over the hood of the car.

 

Sam dug through the toolbox until he felt the right wrench. He hefted it in his hands, remembering doing this with Baby more than once with no details. He put it into Dean’s outstretched arm.

 

Dean grunted in thanks and went right back to work, head buried in all the various car parts of the old Honda. The wrench twisted, making that buzzing-clicking noise, and Dean shifted a few things around. Sam wasn’t paying close enough attention to know exactly what Dean was doing--Dean had taught him a lot about cars, before he went to hell--because the lamp Dean had positioned over the engine was too bright and hurt Sam’s eyes.

 

Sam twitched. Hell. He’d remembered something about before Dean going to hell. What had it been? Yes, right. He’d remembered Dean teaching him how to take care of Baby for when he was gone. Sam’s hands clenched into fists in his lap. 

 

The side of the road, midwest America. Dean had given him that look like Dean had already died and gone to hell, and Sam was just a beautiful memory to treasure, a picture in a scrapbook, nothing more. 

 

Dean asked for something, and Sam gave it to him without really focusing on the task. It must’ve been the right thing because Dean went right back to work.

 

Sam mulled over things for a while. He wondered why that memory had happened without the wall making a fuss when he could barely remember anything else recent, especially since it technically had to do with hell. Were more recent things coming through? Was it happening on its own or because Sam had forced the strip poker memory?

 

Was the wall gone? Was his lingering headache the remains of it, and now everything dark and evil and scorched and unimaginable would just casually bombard him? 

 

He had asked for it, sitting in the panic room. God, that had only been two days ago, but it felt like ages in the past. For all he knew, he was shattered glass. 

 

Sam didn’t know how to feel about that. He didn’t really feel much about that. He heard a muted clunk and turned back to Dean, blinking the fog away.

 

Dean swore and reached down into the car, fishing around for something. “Dammit,” he said. He shuffled closer, spreading his legs and bending over further so he could get his arm into the car down to the shoulder.

 

He took a long time to feel for whatever it was, and Sam watched him the whole time, train of thought stalled, mouth dry. 

 

There was only one way he could put it. Dean’s ass was enticing. It wasn’t perfect, but it was familiar, and it was right there, in worn-in jeans that clung to his body in just the right way.

 

This was new, only obviously it wasn’t. Want was an unfamiliar feeling. He wasn’t sure if it could be categorized as a “happy” emotion, per se, but it had been one of the ones he was fully prepared to never feel again, one of the emotions he thought had gotten lost when he felt so hollow all the time.

 

And yet something was stirring inside him. Desire. It was muted, it was lazy and unhurried, but it was still there. Sam was free to admire. 

 

“Yes!” Dean barked out, hauling himself upright. He was covered in oil. He turned to Sam, grinning, holding a crank out triumphantly. “Got it.”

 

Sam tried to act like he hadn’t just been eying Dean’s ass. He raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Good… job?” he tried.

 

It must’ve been just the right amount of snarky little brother, because Dean rolled his eyes right back at him and turned back to the car. “A thankless job,” he said.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam replied, distracted. There were… bigger things on his mind.

 

He hated discovering himself one piece at a time, of being aware of the missing bits, growing an identity around that, and then having that identity crumble when a new memory came along. It wasn’t something that could continue forever.

 

He needed his memories back.

 

All of them.

 

And if God himself couldn’t sort the hell ones from the rest…

 

Well. Sam didn’t know. But he needed to remember.

 

He stood up, decision solidified. He was committed to it. Now more than ever. No more waffling around, no more hiding under Dean’s wings when push came to shove.

 

He walked over to the car, heart pounding. Dean stood up, dusting his hands, even though it did nothing to clean the oil from them. “Just about done,” he said, looking up at Sam. “I think he had some invoices he wanted us to sort through, that’s your specialty, geek boy.”

 

“I had another idea,” Sam said, impressed with the way his voice didn’t waver or wobble at all.

 

“Oh yeah?” Dean said, turning his back and wiping his hands on a washcloth. He thunked a tool into the tool box and then shut it, fastening the little handles in place. He turned back to Sam, appraising. “What’s that?”

 

He was so beautiful. Covered in oil, cocky, hair mussed. He was a little soft around the waist, a little older, but Sam loved him for it. Always had, even without the memories. It was so obvious now. “I wanna try… remembering something,” he said, giving Dean a very careful look, and taking one step forward, just one, so he was right in Dean’s space, their chests practically touching.

 

Dean swallowed, looking up at him with heavy-lidded eyes that were fighting through several conflicting emotions. “You do, huh?” he said, voice husky.

 

Sam took a breath, putting one hand on Dean’s hip. He looked into Dean’s eyes. He didn’t blink. He wanted Dean to see that he meant it. That he really honestly wanted it.

 

Dean swallowed. His lips worked soundlessly. Sam watched them move. “We can’t,” Dean said, looking away, taking a step back, breaking the moment.

 

Sam’s hands hung limply by his sides. “Why not?” he said, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

 

Dean gestured back outside with his oil-covered thumb. “Bobby’s still here,” he said, clearing his throat and adjusting his pants. “That was one of our rules.”

 

“Our rules?” Sam echoed. He wracked his barely-filled brain.

 

“We had a few,” Dean said, overly casually. “That was one.”

 

Sam checked his watch. November eighth, twenty-seventeen, two oh five P.M. He was Sam Winchester. The rest was yet to be determined. “He’s gonna be walking Copper soon,” he said.

 

Dean gave him a small smile, shaking his head. He pat Sam on the head as he breezed past, exiting the garage and heading out into the cold. “You can wait,” he called back. 

 

Sam shivered. He hugged himself, hurrying after Dean. He smiled despite himself. 

 

He could wait. Dean might think he was teasing Sam, putting him on edge, but if he’d retained just one thing from before, or maybe even from being down there, it was patience.

 

Sam could wait. It would just make it that much more complete when it really happened.

 

For Dean, he could wait a thousand years, and he had.


	9. Chapter 9

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Doing the invoices was tedious and repetitive. It was just busy work that Bobby could pass off to them because they weren’t paying rent. Not that Sam could blame him. They weren’t exactly perfect tenants. Every time they came to Bobby’s, they came with trouble on their tails. While things were relatively calm, this time was no exception.

 

Bobby wasn’t gone, but he wasn’t home, either--he was out walking Copper. He’d be gone for at least half an hour, probably more, and a clock counted each second inside of Sam’s head.

 

Sam scrolled through Bobby’s clunky old laptop. It ran on a new operating software, two editions into something that had been made while Sam was down below. It made him a little embarrassed--he had been the geek squad before, he had been the tech specialist, and now friggin’ Bobby was operating a machine with more efficiency than him.

 

Sam would get used to it, though. He was a quick learner. Plus, he’d have to, if he and Dean ever hunted again.

 

If he and Dean ever hunted again. What an absolutely loaded question with no absolute answer. Dean hadn’t brought it up even once, and Bobby dance tactfully around it when he mentioned delegating duties for the next few weeks, so Sam got the hint that it wasn’t to be discussed, at least not yet.

 

Sam scrolled through the emails and notes Bobby had made about several cars and fixes that had been done lately. He typed all of the information into the invoice template Bobby had saved. In a way, it was kind of therapeutic. He got to type today’s date in over and over again, and Bobby’s name, and simple things like “a/c fix,” “worn brakes,” “replaced windows.” 

 

It was their last job of the day. Dean was just loitering in the chair next to him, drinking a beer. An empty bottle sat next to the half-full one. Sam eyed it in his periphery for a moment before going back to work. Yet another question he wasn’t sure he was allowed to ask.

 

Sam saved the invoice and printed it out. He shut the laptop as the printer hummed to life. “There,” he said as it printed out the final page. “All done.”

 

Dean’s head fell. He picked it right back up, taking another swig of beer. “Fucking finally,” he said. Dean stood. “C’mon, stick boy.”

 

Sam stood up, heart fluttering enough to make him lightheaded, to fuzz out his vision. He put a hand on the back of his chair, trying to act casual, as if he weren’t using the chair to stay upright. “Go where?” he asked, brain flipping through several lewd possibilities like a rolodex of porn.

 

Dean jerked his head toward the fridge. “Food, part two: the return of the food,” Dean said. “We need to get some more meat on those bones.”

 

“Oh.” Sam felt a little stupid. “What’s on the menu?”

 

“Like I said.” Dean winked at him before opening the fridge. Opening the fridge and bending down far more than necessary, Sam might add. “Meat.”

 

Sam felt less stupid.

 

They had turkey sandwiches. Sam pushed them to have glasses of water, and to his relief, Dean didn’t protest, gathering the beer bottles up and putting them in the sink.

 

They ate in silence, sitting across from one another at the tiny kitchen table, made even tinier by the laptop, papers, and printer littering the surface. 

 

Sam chewed, mulling over a billion different things at once. His worries were pretty well established now, familiar headmates, and for once, he wished his mind would wander and think about the weather, or the foxes in the backyard, or something innocent like that.

 

Something hit his ankle. He jumped. A foot hooked around his ankle, pulling his leg toward Dean.

 

He looked at Dean over his sandwich. Dean was slouched against the back of the chair, eating noisily, looking out the window without a care in the world. His foot nudged Sam’s again.

 

Sam looked down at the rest of his sandwich, blushing. This was ridiculous. They were like teenagers. 

 

He smiled. He snuck another look at Dean, who was still looking out the window, but now trying to hide a smile, too. 

 

Sam ate a little less than he knew he could. In situations like this, limits were important. He put the rest on the plate and carried to to the sink. Dean joined him with an empty plate a moment later, snatching up the unfinished half of Sam’s.

 

They washed and dried the sink in unhurried, tense silence. The moment Sam put the last plate in the cupboard, Dean was brushing up against him, a hand on his back, lightly guiding him forward. 

 

“Whaddaya say?” Dean said, beaming. “Break time?”

 

“Yeah,” Sam said, swallowing. 

 

Dean ambled down the hallway and climbed the stairs, whistling to himself. Something Black Sabbath, something Sam’s brain refused to quite divulge, no matter how unimportant the memory was. Was that the wall or just shitty memory?

 

They walked into their room at the same time, shoulder to shoulder. 

 

Sam stared at the bed. Dean shuffled past him. Sam didn’t know what to do. Was this--were they just going to go right into it? No, that wasn’t how things worked. Especially now, after everything that happened. 

 

Dean grabbed him by the hand. He backed them up until he fell back onto the bed. He sat on the edge, drawing Sam down until they were sitting side-by-side. Dean looped an arm around Sam’s middle, squeezing at his hip. “What’s goin’ on in that big head?” Dean asked.

 

Sam gave him a small smile, bobbing his head in assent. He gestured vaguely between them. “Just… this,” he explained. “Just trying to remember.”

 

“Huh.” Dean’s voice was quieter, deeper. “You remember this?”

 

He moved into Sam’s space, slowly, so slowly, keeping eye contact, lids sinking lower, pupils blowing in slow motion, hand finding its way to Sam’s jaw.

 

Sam closed his eyes just as Dean’s lips met his. He sighed into Dean’s mouth, and Dean kissed him soundly, nibbling on his bottom lip. Dean pulled away, just by millimeters, asking Sam for permission with his eyes. Heart going crazy, skin overheated, Sam leaned forward, and they kissed again.

 

It… it wasn’t fireworks, or an instant mega-boner, or whatever Sam had been expecting. It was still good. It wasn’t quite familiar, not really, and something tingled in his brain, some fucking connection being made somewhere that he couldn’t reach, meaning the wall was definitely still there.

 

It didn’t feel gross, is what he meant. It didn’t feel wrong. It just kinda felt like Dean. Smelled like him, too. 

 

Dean’s tongue slipped into his mouth, and Sam rolled with it. Even without the memories of it, he still knew how to kiss--he still knew how to kiss Dean. It was a weird, half-blind feeling. He sucked on Dean’s tongue, shuffling closer, putting a hand on Dean’s knee.

 

Dean grunted in the back of his throat. Dean’s hands both went to Sam’s hair. He massaged Sam’s head, running his fingers through Sam’s hair, scratching at his scalp, the works. Sam shivered, toes curling, legs stretching out and bumping against the other bed. 

 

They took a break to pant, eyes and lips glued by magnetism and saliva, respectively. 

 

They didn’t need to speak. They were already speaking, in the Winchester way, but changed, advanced. The looks they shared contained paragraphs of devotion. The small touches held big comforts. 

 

Dean manhandled Sam with hands still sunk into his hair, pulling on his hair to tilt his head just so before kissing him. Sam was vibrating everywhere, the sensation of Dean pulling on his hair and scratching behind his ears making his entire body sing. It wasn’t even that sexual, it was just good, it was just comforting, it was just solid. 

 

It was real.

 

They kept kissing, kept breaking apart to confirm the other was really there, kept getting braver, becoming explorers. Sam used tongue, enjoying how Dean’s entire body jerked closer to his. Lips grew swollen. Sam’s jaw even got a little tired.

 

Sam wasn’t hard. He was tingly, he was hot, his heart was pounding… but he wasn’t hard. He didn’t really want to dwell on why, wasn’t in the mood for thinking guilty or scared thoughts. 

 

He wanted this. He wanted to remember. He didn’t want it to come with time. He wanted it now.

 

He scooched closer, kissing Dean deeper, making it downright sloppy and dirty. He whined in the back of throat. He dragged his hand from Dean’s knee to Dean’s thigh.

 

Dean broke them apart, taking his hands out of Sam’s hair and putting them on his shoulders instead to keep them separated. “What are you doing?”

 

“I-” Sam didn’t know what to say. He was blushing something furious. “What do you think?”

 

Dean laughed. It wasn’t an unkind thing, but it still confused Sam. Dean stood, patting Sam’s head like he was a dog. “Hey. C’mon.”

 

Sam didn’t know what to say. He stood too, biting his lip. “Dean-”

 

“You’re not ready for this,” Dean said, face going stern. That was sure blunt. “You don’t even know who you are.”

 

Frustration, ever familiar, flared in Sam’s stomach. “I want this.”

 

Dean’s lips thinned. “You don’t know that,” he said. Sam opened his mouth to bite back a sharp retort, but Dean held his hand up. It only pissed Sam off further, but he forced himself to listen to Dean speak.

 

“I’m not sayin’ that because of your memories,” Dean said. “I can read you, Sammy. You’re not hard, you’re not growling, you’re not twitchy and bitey. I know the look you get when you want something because I know you. Because I’ve done this a million times. You don’t want it, you just want it to happen.”

 

Sam blinked. He opened his mouth, but his response died on his lips. He sat back down on the bed. He hunched further and further over the more the fight left him.

 

Dean sat next to him. “Hey,” he said, squeezing Sam’s shoulders. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

 

“I just want to remember,” Sam said with a slight sigh. He wasn’t mad, not really, not frustrated any longer, just… empty. “I want to be her for you.”

 

“But you aren’t.” Dean brushed Sam’s hair out of his face. Sam watched Dean’s face as he did it, hanging on to the concern furrowing his eyebrows and coloring his eyes, making his full lips purse like that, looking even fuller. Dean was beautiful, especially like this, especially when he was tender, when he was just for Sam. “You’re just you, Sammy. Don’t forget about that. I told you, man. I don’t need anything out of you. What kind of brother would I be?”

 

“But…” Sam bit his lip. “But I want us to be like you said, I want us to be normal.”

 

Dean ducked his head for a brief moment. When he looked back up at Sam, something was glimmering in his eye, something Sam couldn’t quite parse. “We’ll get there,” Dean said softly, after a few beats of silence. “I… I won’t say it’ll all be easy, or I won’t feel bad things, but my god, kiddo. You just got out of hell. Why do you want to push that so hard? I know you’re tryin’ to figure things out about yourself, but I don’t want to get you back just to lose you again.”

 

Sam closed his eyes. What Dean said resonated with him. A hand grazed his chin, and he opened his eyes. Dean’s hand found his chin, tilted it up. “You know I’m here, right?” Dean said, in a low, gruff tone. “Might be stupid, but… just make sure you know that.”

 

“I know,” Sam said, just as softly. His eyes were getting watery. “I know you are.”

 

Dean smiled, a slow-growing and fond little thing. His hand left Sam’s face. “Besides. I might not’a realized it earlier, but we’ve been given a second chance. At us. I’m not gonna mess it up this time.”

 

Sam frowned. He felt a weird mix of jealousy and gratefulness that he couldn’t recall what Dean was talking about. “Mess it up?” he repeated.

 

Dean’s smile was tinged with sadness. “We… we moved too fast,” he said, lost in some memory. “You were too young. It wasn’t--it wasn’t right. You never would’a admitted it, but I started the whole thing. Never you. You… you loved me, I know you did, I know you do, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t take advantage of you.”

 

Sam took a minute to process that. A made-up little story played out in his head, of that skinny-shouldered young boy from his Washington memories, looking up at Dean with those hero worship eyes, and never knowing when to stop, not knowing what his feelings were.

 

He could see it so clearly. 

 

More than that, he could see the conflict in Dean, the guilt, the questions, the doubt. If he ruined Sam for anyone else. If he fucked Sam up. It wasn’t memories, but it was a damn near thing. He could remember Dean’s pain. 

 

Sam squeezed Dean’s hand. Dean looked down at where they joined. “We’ll do it right this time,” Sam promised, and gave Dean a smile to match. After a beat, Dean smiled back. 

 

Sam kissed him one last time, just a chaste thing, closed-lipped, affection and apology in one. Dean kissed him back, hands flitting from spot to spot on Sam’s body, memorizing, cataloguing, like an anxious child worrying at the paw of a well-loved stuffed animal.

 

They broke apart just as Copper began barking up a storm downstairs, announcing Bobby’s arrival. They stood, dusting themselves off. 

 

“Put a pin in that,” Dean said. “Ready for more physical therapy?”

 

Ugh. No, Sam thought. “Yeah,” he said.


	10. Chapter 10

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

They went downstairs, Sam on Dean’s heels. 

 

Copper was at the base of the stairs, as always. Sam felt a little more alive now, a little less like a newly-birthed, weak-legged foal. He was out of breath when he reached Copper. He sat on the bottom stair and let her amble excitedly around him, sniffing him in greeting. He pet her and scritched her behind her ears. 

 

“Where…? Oh. Of course,” Bobby appeared from around the corner, taking off his hat and shaking his head. “She’s not even my girl anymore, not with dog whisperer over here.”

 

Something about Bobby’s joke rankled Sam. He looked over at Bobby, hoping his earnestness showed on his face. “She might like me,” he said, “but she loves you. Remember that.”

 

Bobby didn’t say anything. He came over and bent over and pet Copper alongside him. Dean lingered on Sam’s periphery.

 

“You should walk her sometime,” Bobby said, clearing his throat. “Be good for the both of you.”

 

Sam smiled. “I’d like that,” he said.

 

Bobby quickly smiled back, shielding his emotions almost immediately. Sam felt a twinge of regret for not spending more time with this father figure. He couldn’t blame himself, either, though--even without any memories, even as a twitchy amnesiac, he was so endlessly wrapped around Dean and Dean wrapped around him that sometimes it was hard to come out of that bubble, especially after near death (or in this case, death) experiences.

 

“Need help on anything?” Sam asked as he stood. 

 

Bobby waved him off. “Naw, we’re good for today, and you boys can take the weekend off.”

 

“Thanks, Bobby.” Dean said, stepping in. “We’re gonna get the weight back on this one--do you know anything we could lift?”

 

***

 

Sam grunted, dropping his arms. The outdated encyclopedias thunked onto the ground, opening to random pages. Sam tore his eyes away from an interesting entry on exhumed river channels. 

 

The fuckers were heavy. His arms. God, his arms. They felt like he’d pulled every muscle in them all at once.

 

“Dean,” he said, short of breath, “can we stop?”

 

“Five minute break,” Dean barked out. “Then some more. Your arms are just bone, Sammy. You’re underweight. You-”

 

“I know,” Sam cut in, massaging his biceps and wincing. “S’not a sprint, s’a marathon.”

 

“Sure,” Dean said good naturedly. “And a marathon is more than five minutes a day.”

 

No matter how much he hated it, Dean had a point.

 

Five minutes later, almost on the dot, and Sam was back to work. Three encyclopedias balancing on each palm like he was a waitress was as much as he could handle just about now. Up, down, up, down. Various positions. Dean knew a lot about muscles. He could probably kill it as a physical trainer. He’d get dozens of clients who’d come just to get another glimpse at that killer smile. 

 

And that ass.

 

Sam frowned, lifting harder. His stupid fantasy scenario had gone from him being proud of Dean to him being jealous of imaginary gym rats. 

 

He looked down at himself as he lifted and lowered the books. He really was small, even he could see it. A slim thing, shoulders and ribs and waist all in line with each other. No muscles to broaden his shoulder or fat to rest on his hips. 

 

He knew what Dean saw in him emotionally, but he couldn’t imagine a scenario in which he took off his clothes that would result in Dean liking what he saw. Dean might say “stick boy” affectionately, but he was right.

 

Sam lifted more aggressively. He was eating a little more now. It wouldn’t be long until he looked okay, right? Until he looked normal?

 

He didn’t realize he was out of breath until he hit the floor. He landed hard on his tailbone, and the cement floor of the garage didn’t do him any favors.

 

He panted, lightheaded, vaguely processing that Dean was saying something to him.

 

The panting didn’t stop. He didn’t feel that shitty, his arms hurt, sure, but… he just couldn’t catch his breath.

 

The back of his throat began to burn. He coughed, trying to clear it. His lungs ached. He gasped, a real grisly, gravelly noise.

 

Dean was by his side then, hands clinging tightly to his shoulders. “Sammy,” Dean called, unreasonably loudly for being right in Sam’s face. “Hey, you alright?”

 

Well, the answer to that particular line of inquiry was pretty obvious. Sam put a hand on his chest, gasping and rasping out one breath after another. He wasn’t getting enough air. His head was getting light. 

 

“Breathe,” Dean said, and yeah, Sam was trying, damn it. His body wasn’t cooperating.

 

Minute by minute, with Dean holding onto him and muttering silly little platitudes, his breath came back. His throat and chest still hurt like a bitch, but bit by bit, he was able to pull in a little more air.

 

After about ten minutes, he could draw in a normal breath with it just barely twinging in his chest. He wasn’t lightheaded anymore, but he was exhausted instead, dead tired, limbs heavier than lead, eyelids just as bad.

 

“Hey.” Dean shook him. “We gotta get you up.”

 

“Muurgh,” Sam slurred. He let Dean maneuver him into an upright position. Dean threw one of Sam’s arms around his shoulder. He was bearing a little more than half of Sam’s weight. Not that that was that much.

 

They walked back inside together. It took about 3.4 million years to take the steps one at a time, with Sam’s calves protesting something serious, but they did it. Dean unceremoniously deposited a limp Sam onto the nearest bed, and Sam didn’t care about the sweaty, dirty clothes he was wearing.

 

He closed his eyes. He felt like he was floating. The only thing that ruined the illusion was his aching limbs. He was mostly gone, drifting off, but he processed the gentle tug of Dean getting him out of his clothes.

 

The last thing he knew before he went under was the bed dipping, and warm arms coming up around him.

 

He was safe.

 

***

 

She was under water. She was in ice. She was struck still and slow by nature of being frozen. Her heart couldn’t beat and her legs couldn’t kick, but her eyes could watch, yes, they could, and she could still feel it all. He preferred it that way.

 

He wore her face while she got nothing. Those lips she used to frown at in the mirror curled up into a satisfied smile, like a cat after a fat meal. 

 

His icy claw tore her open from between her breasts to her belly button with little to no effort. Her innards were bared to him.

 

“Yes,” he purred, “let’s get all this mess out of you. You make such a pretty girl with your long intestine wrapped around your throat.”

 

She watched her own eyes go blue with ice, face contorting into masculine murder. 

 

The devil took her apart, borrowing the fractured pieces of herself and making her watch as she was destroyed. Only her, only ever her, never him. The devil wanted her to be suffering, wanted her to be sorrow.

 

He turned her happiness into death.


	11. Chapter 11

 

CHAPTER TEN

 

Sam awoke in a sweaty tangle of limbs, entire body a pulse aching in time with his rapidly fluttering heartbeat. He tried to sit up, but an arm across his chest and an aching midsection prevented him from levering himself up more than an inch or two.

 

He flopped back against the pillow, panting and blinking. He looked up at the ceiling. It was painted blue in early morning light. It must have been around sunrise.

 

Dean was snoring away on top of him, air puffing out against Sam’s face. Sam looked toward the window. It was raining. He could see it, could hear it rumbling against the roof and tinking into the gutters.

 

It was a small comfort. He sighed, trying to relax. His limbs twinged if he so much as bent a toe. There was no chance he was going back to sleep, and he wasn’t about to wake Dean up. Dean deserved his sleep. Lord knew how many sleepless nights he’d had in the past six years.

 

The dream was fading, floating away on bubbles of anxiety, pop, pop, pop.

 

But Sam wanted to remember.

 

As sickly as it made him feel, the dream was important. The dream was contraband from the other side of the wall. He was Berlin in 1989.

 

“Ice,” he mouthed to himself. “Trapped in ice, tortured, him wearing my face. Making me… hurt. Confusing me.”

 

He recalled specific bits of imagery--pink intestines against white ice, blue skin, blue eyes. Sharp teeth. The stuffing that pushed out of his seams. Her seams.

 

“You think too loudly.” Dean’s voice was muffled and slurred with spit and startled Sam.

 

Dean raised his head off of Sam’s chest, blinking blearily at him, crust keeping his eyes from opening all the way. His hair was all smoothed down on one side, cowlicked to hell on the other.

 

“Sorry,” Sam whispered.

 

“Time’s’it?” Dean rumbled in a low drawl. He rolled off of Sam, checking the digital clock on the nightstand himself. “Fuuuuck, it’s early.”

 

“Sorry,” Sam whispered again. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

 

“N’guh,” Dean brushed off his apology.

 

Silence. They stared up at the ceiling side-by-side, Dean’s right ankle crossed over Sam’s left, Dean’s right hand skittering across the sheets like The Hand in The Addam’s Family. It squeezed Sam’s left hand.

 

Sam yawned, letting the dream escape from his lungs along with the air. He knew already it would linger with him today, cling to him like a film of dust. He would always remember the way it made him feel, the scant and nauseating knowledge it granted him.

 

“Can we just… stay here for a bit?” Dean asked, out of the blue.

 

“Sure,” Sam said. He could agree to that, considering how dead his body was.

 

The rain filled in the gaps of their conversation, giving Sam ample time to mull over his dream, his thoughts, his current state of mind. He chewed on his lip, wondering how much he should tell Dean.

 

He checked his watch. It was November ninth, twenty seventeen, six ten in the morning, he was Sam Winchester, and he was splintered.

 

“I had a dream,” he said, voice soft enough to be just barely heard over the susurrus of the storm.

 

Dean rolled onto his side, facing Sam. His eyebrows wiggled. “You did, huh?”

 

“A--A nightmare,” he elaborated, rolling to face Dean.

 

The cheese was wiped off of Dean’s face, replaced with older brotherly concern. “You did?” he repeated, this time with worry instead of suggestion.

 

“I remembered some of hell. I think,” he added hastily. For all he knew, this was what his brain conjured up from the information he’d gathered about his time under and his identity.

 

Dean was quiet, waiting for him to continue. Sam shuffled a little closer. Dean draped a loose arm low on Sam’s hip. Sam pulled the sheets up to their shoulders in the early morning chill.

 

“He was wearing her- my- face,” Sam started, letting a breath out. He curled up, body seeking Dean’s. Dean rubbed his hip. The sensation comforted Sam. “It was so cold. The coldest place imaginable. And he tore her apart. He was in her head. He never touched… he wanted Sam to associate being her with fear,” the last part was said in clinical, detached monotone. He knew he was separating from all of it, taking a step back from the pain, but he needed Dean to know, needed to let Dean in this time, no matter what it took, no matter what it took away from him.

 

Dean nodded. “He knew how to hurt you,” he murmured. “But you’re out now, and he can’t hurt you anymore.”

 

Sam nodded back. He needed to hear that. But he needed to voice something, too. “What if… that’s why I can’t remember her? Why I’m not her? He made sure all of her would be part of hell. Now it’s all behind the wall. And you said earlier that every time I was sad or worried or angry I was him. What if that means… what if I can’t…” He spoke faster and faster as he got into it, imagining the worst case scenario, imagining his body as an empty casket, nothing more. A grave marker. A reminder, a wraith. Robo-Sam.

 

“Hey. Hey. Hey,” Dean broke in, speaking in low, urgent, tones, hand brushing up and down Sam’s side and grounding him. “You can’t think like that, Sammy. You don’t know that.”

 

Sam looked over at Dean, not censoring the desperation in his eyes, the sheen that was quickly spreading over them. “You don’t know it’s not true,” he pressed. “The devil is smart. For all we know, he knew all my happy would get put behind that wall.”

 

“Okay, now you’re just getting ahead of yourself,” Dean snapped. “You’re gonna give yourself an anxiety attack. Stop it, Sammy. You’re too far in your own head to see how fucking stupid that is.”

 

Sam blinked. “What?”

 

Dean made a noise, schooling his features into an almost fatherly visage of patience. “You have felt good things. You have been happy. I’ve seen it. You’re the only one sabotaging that--not her, not Lucifer, no one.”

 

Sam flopped onto his back, shaking his head. He was antsy now, completely awake, but his limbs were not ready to cooperate. “Why are you always the voice of reason now?”

 

Dean thumped him solidly on the chest, surprising a cough out of Sam. “‘Cause big brother knows best,” he said with an idiotic grin. “You ready to give those long legs of yours a spin?”

 

Sam knew it wasn’t really a request, and hoped his legs wouldn’t up and tumble out from under him when he got out of bed.

 

He knew what Dean was asking for, and he was willing to give it to him: they could forget for a little while.

 

***

 

He survived the transition from horizontal to vertical living, thank goodness, though he did have to limp a little to alleviate the twinging pain of pulled muscles in his thighs. His arms were even worse. He was beyond grateful they were taking a break from any sort of lifting.

 

Sam wasn’t entirely off the hook, though, even though Bobby had given them the weekend. Dean thought it would be best for both of them to go for a run, to to clear their heads. To come back to earth. Just when Sam was about to mention the rain, though, the rain conveniently pittered away to a drizzle, and by the time Sam had laced up his sneakers with more precision than necessary, delaying the inevitable, it had stopped completely, leaving them with a muddy, grey-brown earth, and a deep grey sky, the world limited in color and temperature.

 

They took it a little easier than the day previous. They started with an easy jog, just going around the Impala with an overly excitable Copper barking alongside them. They took a small break, for orange juice, Bobby shaking his head at them from the stove, where he was making breakfast.

 

When they started up again, they went a little faster, but only just, doing laps around the house with Copper by their side. Sam’s legs hurt, but Dean was pacing things just so that Sam never hurt in ways he couldn’t handle. He was always just on the edge of exhaustion and giving up when Dean called out that it was time for a break.

 

The next time they headed in, it was for breakfast. Bobby made a mean plate of bacon and scrambled eggs, and according to Dean, it was the perfect workout meal.

 

As much as Sam wanted to sit and luxuriate in the warmth of the kitchen and the deliciousness of the food, he could only eat so much or he’d suffer the consequences, and before long, Dean was calling him out into the late-autumn chill once again.

 

He had to admit, the brisk breeze offset his overly sweaty body and the heat it produced, and going on short, manageable runs like this really was doing wonders for his head.

 

He couldn’t help feeling like he was stuck in a loop. Things would be okay, he’d make some progress, and then some worry or some nightmare or something caught behind the wall would break him down, undo some progress, Dean would comfort him, and he’d make a little more progress. Two steps forward, one step back.

 

But that was still stepping forward, right?

 

The frustration he felt was familiar. A memory he hadn’t realized he’d gained until after he’d been thinking about it for a while sung of the same pain. When he was seventeen, almost eighteen, and doing applications in secret, he’d gone on a hunt with Dad and Dean where one rawhead turned out to be fucking two. A completely out of the blue scenario that had them way in over their heads.

 

They just barely survived. Dad concussed, and out of commission for two whole weeks because of it, reducing Dean to a scared little kid again.

 

Not just a scared little kid, but a nurse, ‘cause the second rawhead had torn into Sam. A centimeter deeper, and he wouldn’t have had his intestines any longer. Or a pulse.

 

He lost a lot of blood, and the stitches in his abdomen were long and deep. Before he’d come back from hell, before Cas had reset their bodies, that scar had been one of his most prominent and recognizable, excluding the violent gash at the base of his spine.

 

Bending over, stretching, or exerting himself in any way had resulted in a deep, queasy pain in his tummy, and the blood loss had knocked him down several pegs. He had his entire mental faculties, but could barely move.

 

He had to sit around for weeks, just waiting for his body to heal, watching Dean skitter between himself and their dad with some messed up guilt from escaping the hunt relatively untouched. Sam had to remind Dean over and over again that Dean had saved their lives.

 

Sam had been so fucking frustrated. Sure, he’d been given ample time to do his applications, but he’d never felt so useless. He couldn’t help Dad, couldn’t help Dean. All his awkward platitudes fell so flat. It was always Dean who knew just the right thing to say, and Sam couldn’t be that for him.

 

Overexertion, exhaustion, frustration. Pace yourself, Dean’s admonishing voice said in the back of his head. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Way easier said than done, Sam thought grouchily.

 

He’d said it was a marathon, sure, but actually running the damn thing was impossible at times.

 

They did three laps through the junkyard before Dean said they were done. For the morning or for the whole day, Sam didn’t know, but he’d take it. He headed inside, almost melting where he stood when he saw Bobby tending to the fire in the study.

 

He plopped onto the couch in front of the fire, drawing the blanket from the back of the couch around his shoulders. Copper jumped up onto the couch beside him, fitting herself into his side. Sam could get used to this new little routine of theirs.

 

Dean joined him moments later, handing him a piping hot mug of hot cocoa. Sam blew on it absentmindedly, enjoying the way the excess heat warmed up his chin. He kept his other hand on Copper’s soft flank.

 

Bobby tossed another log on the fire before standing up, dusting his hands off. He turned and looked at the group gathered on the couch with little to no surprise.

 

“Like cats in a pool of sunlight,” he groused, and Sam smiled. He shot Dean a look. Dean was smiling, too.

 

Sam took a sip of the cocoa. Bobby lingered, using the excuse of cleaning up his desk to spend some much-needed time with his boys. No words were exchanged. Sam was grateful. He tilted his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes, listening to Copper’s panting, the crackle of the fire, and the shuffle of papers on the desk.

 

Sam woke up to Dean draping another blanket around his shoulders. He was sprawled out on the couch, Copper still faithfully beside him. He blinked, looking for his cup of hot cocoa with an inappropriately large surge of anxiety.

 

Dean read his thoughts. “Cleaned up after you,” he murmured. Sam looked around, yawning. The study was pristine. Copper snuffed, licking his hand. Sam stretched out his toes, then hauled himself up with a grunt.

 

He took inventory. He wasn’t as achey as before. A little tired, a little hungry. But mostly okay.

 

He caught Dean looking at him and shot him what he hoped was a reassuring look. Dean nodded back, disappearing into the kitchen. Sam stretched, back popping, and followed after, Copper following after him.

 

Despite Bobby’s protestations, they cleaned the dishes in the sink and fed Copper. After that, though, they were at a loss. Free time was a foreign concept, something rarely given to the Winchester brothers.

 

Dean went upstairs to listen to music (on a Sony Walkman of all things) and ended up sinking into a cat nap. Sam wondered if it was contagious or if their bodies just reacted to slow moments this way, thanks to their busy lives.

 

He put on his thicker jacket in the silence of their bedroom, watching Dean snooze with soft eyes. Dean was sprawled out on his tummy, drooling onto his forearm.

 

Sam put barely-there fingers in Dean’s hair before he turned and left the room, stepping quietly down the stairs.

 

Copper, asleep in her bed by the back door, raised her head, cocked in question. He answered her by lacing up his sturdiest pair of boots out of the two he owned, and pulling up the hood to his jacket.

 

Copper stood up, stretching, tail wagging, expecting a walk. “Sorry, Cop,” Sam said, and slipped his rail-thin body out the screen door, preventing Copper from following him out. She watched him through the screen as he trundled through the yard and he felt comforted by her watchful eye as he disappeared deep into the edges of Bobby’s land, where the the scrap yard transitioned into a field of wild grasses and flowers, ash trees neighbored by giant rust behemoths and long-dead machinery.

 

Sam found a safe, empty glade to stand in, obscured from the house by plant life and abandoned vehicles alike. He looked up at the underbelly of the cloudy sky, saw more rain was on the horizon.

 

He blinked into the chilly breeze that rattled through him. He shoved his hands into his pockets and took a breath, closing his eyes, head still tilted toward the heavens.

 

“Uh, God,” he muttered, feeling stupid and awkward, “if you can hear me… can we--can we talk?”

 

Sam waited, eyes still shut tight, cheeks burning. He took a peek with one eye. He was alone.

 

“Cas,” Sam tried, “uh, Castiel, if you can hear me, can you come down to Bobby’s? I wanna talk.”

 

Sam rocked back and forth on his heels, waiting. The breeze shuddered through the curled, red leaves of the trees.

 

Sam a breath, inhaling the breeze. It lowered his blood pressure.

 

He was not alone.

 

Sam opened his eyes. So long shut, his eyes took a moment to readjust to the light, but he could clearly see the ratty trench coat standing before him.

 

He cracked a smile despite himself, lopsided and relieved. “Hey, Cas.”

 

Cas nodded toward him, stoic as ever, hands in his pockets, too. “Sam. You look. Well.”

 

“I look like shit,” Sam corrected. There. For the briefest of seconds, the smallest of smiles pulled at Cas’s face. So his fragile foothold on humanity wasn’t entirely gone. That was good.

 

“So, uh, how are you?” Sam asked, shuffling closer. “What have you been up to?”

 

Cas cocked his head, a copy of Copper. “Dean hasn’t updated you on the status of Heaven?”

 

“He said it was in a--a Civil War.”

 

Cas cocked his head the other way. Sam schooled away his smile. “Mostly true,” Castiel ceded. “There have been some questions as to… administration. They’ve since been handled.”

 

Sam didn’t like the easy way Cas spoke like a politician, coating big situations with innocent, little words. He rolled with it, electing to address the elephant in the room head-on.

 

“So, I was brought back from hell,” Sam started, watching Cas’s reaction carefully, “by God.”

 

Cas bobbed his head.

 

“And you’ve met him,” Sam stated.

 

Cas bobbed his head again.

 

Sam spread his arms out, ignoring the blistering cold. “Why?”

 

Cas squinted, gears turning. “Why did you he bring you back?”

 

“Yes,” Sam said. “And this wall… it’s not working out.”

 

Cas’s face transformed to withheld interest to intense concern faster than Sam had ever seen him emote. Cas moved into his space, scrutinizing him. “The wall doesn’t work?”

 

“I remember some hell stuff, and barely anything from before the jump. I’m half a person.”

 

Cas moved even closer, their noses a hair away from bumping, unperturbed by their abrupt closeness. He held a hand up to Sam’s forehead. “May I?”

 

There was still much to talk about, questions left unanswered, but he may as well let Castiel do a diagnostics check. “Sure,” he sighed.

 

Cas pressed a warm hand to the center of his forehead. Sam’s eyes closed automatically, a small electric shot shooting down his spine. He could feel Cas rifling about in his head, could sense the grace in his brain.

 

It built into a headache, pressure forming at the bridge of his nose and his brow, but disappeared when Cas lifted his hand. He was frowning at Sam, peering closely into his eyes like he thought he’d see the problem through his pupils.

 

Sam swallowed past a little bundle of nerves, paranoid thoughts bubbling up like caffeine from sugar-sweet soda. “Well?”

 

“The wall is standing,” Cas said, pausing, and Sam restrained the urge to reach out and shake him, to rattle the full conclusion of the results out of him. “But you’re right in feeling unsettled. Your soul is troubled.”

 

Sam knew Cas could carefully guide him through everything, explain everything like a walking encyclopedia, but he was short on time, thinking back to Dean’s light snoozes, checking his watch. It was November ninth, one eleven P.M., he was Sam Winchester, and he was tired.

 

“Will I ever get my memories back?” Sam asked. “All of them?”

 

“I can’t tell,” Cas said, and any anger Sam had was washed away by the sympathy coloring Cas’s features. “The wall you have is not cement. If you chose to, you could remove it.”

 

Sam’s ears perked up at that. “I could remove it?” he repeated.

 

Cas bobbed his head. “You’ve already pushed at it, searching for memories in potent places the way that you have. If there is something you want unearthed, it must all come down. Otherwise, you may have to live without your memories.”

 

Sam blew out a breath. So there was the fork in the road he’d been so afraid of voicing to himself.

 

“He’ll be glad to know you’re doing alright,” Cas said, so conversationally that it took Sam a moment to process who Cas was referring to.

 

“Alright is a bit of a stretch,” Sam said with a wry smile. “Can you tell him… thanks?” he asked, feeling yet again stupid.

 

To his surprise, Cas just nodded. “I’ll try to check up on you, but I cannot guarantee I can come every time you call. I’m very busy.”

 

“I know.” Sam smiled. Everyone had changed; it shouldn’t leave him feeling so odd. “Thanks, Castiel.”

 

“Give Dean my greetings.” Castiel stepped away, eyes pointed to the clouds.

 

“I will. Goodbye, Cas.”

 

“Goodbye, Sam.”

 

A flutter of wings, and Cas was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

A rustle of high grass stalks, and Dean was there. “What did Cas have to say?”

 

Sam dug his aching, chilly hands into his jacket pockets and loosely shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing I didn’t expect,” he said. “He says the wall’s still there, but I’ll either have to never remember and be him forever or remember all the evil and--and her.”

 

Sam sat among the grass, out of breath and out of energy. 

 

Dean sat beside him. “So what are you going to do?”

 

Sam shot him a look. He’d expected Dean to beg him not to push at the wall, to play it safe. He rested his head on Dean’s shoulder, closing his eyes when Dean wrapped a warm, safe arm around him. “I don’t know,” he sighed out, feeling a little lighter with the honestly. “I’m scared.”

 

“Hey,” Dean murmured, kissing the crown of his head. “I’ll catch you no matter what happens, okay? If you wanna remember…” Dean’s breath hitched, but he pushed on. “I’ll be here. If you don’t, we’ll rebuild.”

 

Sam lifted his head from Dean’s shoulder to give him another look, brow furrowed. “You’d start over with me?” he asked.

 

The look Dean gave him was both admonishing and overwhelmingly affectionate, his old eyes crinkling at the edges. “I’ve been sayin’ that since day one. I’d start over with you a million times if I had to.”

 

Sam stretched out his legs. He had nothing more to say to that. 

 

“And we’ve already started something,” Dean reminded him softly.

 

Would it really be so bad to give up those memories, to give her up? 

 

He could try to be her. He could adopt the feelings he was seeking, fake it until he made it. He could tell Dean, use the pronouns, the whole nine yards. But he hadn’t felt it yet, only in little, fleeting, addicting moments. 

 

Dean knew so much of them. Dean had all that history. Even if Sam couldn’t recall the details, he had impressions of it, and of course still felt vague tickles of emotions that almost thirty years of a life lived together had cultivated. Not knowing what made them “them” was frustrating.

 

But Dean was willing to help him back up. Dean didn’t give a single fuck who Sam was or what he remembered. Dean didn’t care what Sam might become, would love him to bits even if he was a different person from before. 

 

Sam sat up straighter, stretching out all of his limbs. Dean’s arm lifted from around him. 

 

“You ready?”

 

Sam nodded. He heaved himself to his feet. His vision went grey at the edges, but the spell quickly lifted. They headed back through the acres of untamed land together, moving in comfortable silence. 

 

Crows cawed. The grasses stirred. Repeated but new. Like an infant, every experience shaped Sam, let him see through new eyes. He wondered how many different schools of philosophy he’d floated through on his way to the person he was now.

 

Dean held open the screen door for him. Sam slipped inside and cast aside all of his wandering thoughts. He knelt, untying his boots, Copper licking his face in greeting as he did. Dean similarly undressed next to him, hanging his coat on the peg. 

 

Once they were both down to flannels and jeans, they moved through the house, searching for Bobby. 

 

They found him in the kitchen, standing over the table, one of his worn handheld phones pressed to his ear. His back was tense, his knuckles white on the table. “No, of course,” Bobby was saying gruffly. Bobby dropped his head. “I know some folks out that way. I’ll check it out. Thanks. You too.”

 

Bobby hung the phone up with a slam. He turned to face Sam and Dean, arms crossed, eyes appraising. 

 

Dean made the first move. “What’s going on?” he asked, all business.

 

Bobby sighed, pulling out a chair and falling into it. “Just some demon activity in the Midwest.”

 

“I would say business as usual, but…” Dean trailed off. At Sam’s confused look, he elaborated. “It’s been a while.”

 

That made sense. What mess could demons get up to without their big plan, without their tenuous line of leadership? Sam wondered what Crowley was up to, if demons had to do taxes now. 

 

“I’m gonna have to make some calls,” Bobby said. “I’m a little rusty on gathering up the troops.”

 

“We could help,” Sam offered.

 

The response he got was immediate. “No,” Bobby and Dean said in stern unison. 

 

“If it got really bad,” Sam pressed. “I’m getting my strength back, I still remember how to strip a .45… if there are any experts on hell, you’re looking at them.”

 

Bobby didn’t speak. 

 

Dean was fuming. “Jesus,” he snapped. “You’re not okay, Sam! We’ve got to fix you first. And we haven’t talked about this,” Dean’s voice dropped off, and he glanced at Bobby. Bobby looked between the two of them. 

 

Dean was right; they hadn’t really spoke of hunting, or anything beyond their immediate future. Just like walls faced with floods, it wasn’t surprising that all it took was some bad news monsters to break open the truth for them. 

 

“I can find someone else,” Bobby said into the tense quiet. “It’s not like I’m strapped for bodies. You two sit tight, alright? If I have to go anywhere, I know you can manage the junkyard.”

 

Bobby gathered up some papers. He raised his eyebrows at them. “I’m going to go do a brief refresher on exorcisms,” he said. “I’d suggest you finish this conversation.”

 

Sam shook his head as Bobby brushed past them and disappeared into the study. There was the fatherly reprimanding he’d so missed. 

 

He and Dean looked at each other. Dean jerked his head toward the stairs. “Wanna have our first row?” he asked.

 

“It won’t be a row,” Sam said, walking over and heaving himself up, one stair at at time. 

 

Dean followed him up. “Maybe we both forgot the time we got married,” he groused. 

 

Sam smiled.

 

Inside their room, inactivity tempted them, but there were about three different overdue conversations simmering, and Sam was not looking forward to several pots boiling over all at once. 

 

He sat in the desk chair by the window. Dean sat at the foot of the nearest bed. In the cramped room, they were only inches away, gold and red leaves shaking in the window between them.

 

“What are we gonna do?” Sam asked.

 

Dean spread his hands out. “About?”

 

Sam bit his lip. “I want to remember,” he said.

 

Dean’s expression changed, becoming more guarded. “Are you sure about that?”

 

“No,” Sam said honestly. “I’ve been wanting to poke the wall for a while, to get more of her, of us, something real, and I might as well test it, right? If I can’t deal with it… we’ll deal with it.”

 

Dean gave him a sturgeon face, sarcastically ceding the point. “Right, rational,” he said. “Perfectly safe.”

 

Sam shook his head. “What else can I do?” Sam said. “If you were me…”

 

“I know, I know,” Dean broke in, reaching out and ruffling Sam’s air, defusing the situation. “It’s just our luck, isn’t it?”

 

“What about Bobby?” Sam switched tracks. “What about hunting?”

 

“Do you want to hunt?” Dean asked.

 

“Do you?”

 

Dean kicked his ankle. “I asked you first.”

 

“Very mature, Dean.”

 

They looked at each other, and it took Sam a few beats to realize what held both of them back. They both felt the same, suspecting differently of one another.

 

“I don’t want to,” Sam said honestly, and god, was it an enormous weight lifted off his chest to say that.

 

Dean’s face battled with several emotions, but he nodded, relief melting the worry away in small amounts. “I don’t want to, either, but what else are we?” he asked. “We can’t stay at Bobby’s forever.”

 

“Why not?” Sam asked in a small voice.

 

Dean’s features softened. “I don’t know who we are without it,” he said, “and we saved a lot of people, but… damn it, Sammy, I want to save you.”

 

“You’d make a good mechanic,” Sam poked with a small smile.

 

Dean smiled back. “You’d be a fantastic librarian.”

 

Sam stepped out of the chair, fitting himself into the place between Dean’s legs, looking down at his brother. Dean’s eyes darkened, but he restrained himself, putting light hands on Sam’s hips, nothing else. 

 

Sam nosed Dean’s jaw, his heart fluttering in his chest. This was a terrible way to avoid a conversation, but it was an answer to another one, an unspoken worry he knew Dean was carrying around with him. 

 

Dean moved his head, bumping his nose with Sam’s. They traded a look.

 

Yes, Sam said with his eyes. Please.

 

Dean kissed him first. Sam pressed into Dean’s space, and Dean shuffled as far back as he could. His hands climbed Sam’s back, and Sam kissed him back deeply, drawing hushed swears out of Dean’s throat.

 

It was like homecoming somehow. Dean’s hands moved up to his hair, tanging in it and tugging, nails scratching at his scalp. Sam’s toes curled. He let Dean tilt his head this way and that, pressed his tongue into Dean’s mouth.

 

The kiss grew heated. In the afternoon quiet, it was loud, wet. They kept gasping, breaths hitching, little noises bubbling up out of both of them. 

 

Dean broke the kiss, pressing his forehead against Sam’s with his eyes closed. Sam watched him, eyes taking in the close-up detail of every part of Dean’s face: his ever-deepening crow’s feet, the silver scar by his left temple, his faded freckles. 

 

Dean’s hands came down to squeeze briefly at Sam’s hips. His eyes fluttered open, and he lifted his head away, meeting Sam’s eyes. Sam didn’t have enough time to conceal the raw affection he was feeling, nor did he want to. Dean’s features softened in response, and Dean was savoring him, too, smiling softly.

 

“So,” Dean said, their mouths close enough that Dean’s breath puffed against Sam’s face. “Plan?”

 

Sam leaned back. He turned and dropped onto the bed beside Dean. He stared out the window, biting his lip in thought. Being in the panic room had triggered some unpleasant memories, and walking himself through one of Dean’s memories brought him into his own. And then there was the nightmare. 

 

Brains weren’t logical pieces of machinery. Even with all the supernatural shit attached to minds and thoughts and the like, they were still as confusing and inexplicable as ever. There wasn’t going to be some sure fire, super secret unlock code Sam could use, no extra level hidden in the game menu. 

 

Trial and error, really. Trial and error. It wasn’t anything new. Hunting was a messy, messy lifestyle. 

 

“We have to treat it like a case,” Sam said to Dean after a moment of thought. “Find the best course of action.”

 

“As long as it’s not going back to the panic room,” Dean said, brow scrunching up. 

 

“No, no,” Sam assured him. “No, I think we should memory walk again.” At Dean’s look, he added, “like you did when I found the receipt.”

 

The lightbulb went off over Dean’s head. He was looking off across the room, thinking and nodding. “Right,” he said, and that single word in that specific tone of voice was doing all kinds of weird things to Sam’s head, drawing him back to blurry, censored memories of a life having conversations like this, connecting photos with push pins and long, red lines of yarn.

 

“Do you want me to talk about some other memory? Or should we find the crystal skull first?” Dean asked, nudging Sam.

 

Sam rolled his eyes. “I thought that was your least favorite movie. I thought that ‘in this house, it doesn’t exist,’” he quoted.

 

“Oh, so you remember that,” Dean grouched under his breath. “It was better when I watched it high.”

 

Sam raised his eyebrows. That was quite the mental image. He had several questions. He shook his head. “Wait, what did you even mean? Crystal skull?”

 

“An artifact of a past life,” Dean said. “Y’know, another receipt, a page in Dad’s journal, a condom.”

 

Sam stuttered a little, cheeks going red at the dorky satisfaction written across Dean’s face. “Classy,” Sam fired back. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

 

“Okay.” Dean slapped his hands on the seat of his pants in a moment of decisiveness. He stood up. “But before we do any treasure hunting, Shia, you are getting some protein and working out those calves.”

 

Sam groaned. “Don’t call me Shia,” he said. “You obviously see yourself as Indy, which would make me your--”

 

“Workout time!” Dean called, drowning him out, clapping his hands. “Come on, lazy ass! It’s good for you! Clear your thoughts!”

 

Sam hauled himself off the bed, calling Dean a few colorful names in his head, but followed Dean down the stairs and out the house, coats being thrown back on as they went. 

 

They passed Bobby on the way out, who gave them a small wave. He was still in the study, hunched over a big, dusty book, on the phone with someone. They let him be.

 

It was even colder outside than before, and Dean started jogging, calling to Sam that working up a sweat would make him feel warmer.

 

Sam’s body didn’t want to cooperate, but he knew Dean was right. He forced himself into motion, chasing after Dean, who always stayed just out of reach, taunting Sam in some older brotherly attempt to motivate him. Yeah, sure.

 

Sam’s breath tightened after just a few minutes, the cold air burning through his lungs, but he pushed on. Dean was right, anyway. He used to go on runs whenever he could, just to empty his head and externalize all his bullshit. 

 

It was easier to enjoy running when you were a healthy, angsty young man, though, and not a centuries-old ex-comatose stick bug with blood pressure issues.

 

After a while, Dean disappeared from sight, running at a pace that would actually be a good cardio exercise for him instead of moving slowly, leading Sam around.

 

It was freeing; Sam didn’t blame him. He relaxed, running at his own pace, alone in the junkyard. He could hear the occasional traffic on the road through the trees, but other than that, the only sounds were his own pants, growing raspier by the minute. 

 

Sam sat to rest in the still-open threshold of the same champagne Previa he’d found before. That memory felt years old even though it was only a couple of days ago. Having such a shallow base of memories made it feel like they’d spanned his entire actual existence.

 

But no. There was a lot he couldn’t remember, a deep pool of formative experiences. 

 

And by the end of the day, he might know more. Or he might be a drooling mess. Only time would tell.

 

When his chest loosened a little, and his legs didn’t ache as much, he stood up, taking a breath. He kept running, picking a different path this time, pushing further into the maze of vehicles instead of circling back toward home.

 

The further out he got, the newer the cars got, recent additions dumped on the slowly spreading territory of the junkyard. There were 2006 Challengers and 2009 A4s here, smushed and stripped, windshield windows and tires gone. 

 

Sam only knew so much about cars through association with Dad and Dean. He’d never been all that drawn in by them, by the history and specs and care and all that. At the very least, Dean’s appreciation of classic cars and muscle cars had rubbed off on him. Other than that, he just wanted something that drove. And something fuel efficient.

 

He smiled to himself, jogging past a green Prius that looked new to him, but he reminded himself it wasn’t. He had no idea what current cars even looked like. 

 

He wondered how betrayed Dean would feel if Sam commented on what a gas guzzler the Impala was.

 

He wouldn’t say it. He still loved her despite her flaws. 

 

He would keep his positive feelings about hybrid vehicles to himself.

 

He didn’t know how long he’d been running before he was out of breath again; it felt longer than the last go. He was at the fringes of the lot now; it would take a good five or more minutes to get back home. With a pang he wondered if Dean was searching from, worried out of his mind.

 

He paused to catch his breath, bracing his palms on his knees. He strained to hear anything save his panting and the birds; there was nothing. Surely Dean’s voice would reach this far.

 

Sam jogged back home, stumbling when the porch came into sight and Dean with it. His legs were begging for rest. Dean stood up when he caught sight of Sam. Dean was holding up something--a glass of water. Thank God.

 

Sam collapsed against the porch railing, tilting his head back. The lightest of drizzle fell on his forehead, and he closed his eyes, sighing in relief as the cool drops of water speckled his face.

 

“Have fun?” Dean asked dryly. Sam lifted his head, blinking at Dean. Dean held out the water. Sam took it. He was so sapped of energy that he had to cup it in both hands and take shallow, grateful sips.

 

They went inside in tandem. Sam pet Copper in greeting. Bobby was nowhere to be seen; Sam distantly recalled he hadn’t seen Bobby’s Chevelle in the yard as he ran home. 

 

While Sam would’ve loved to flop around for hours, or take another nap to appease his aching body, he’d been chasing after memories in the junkyard, and any more time in this liminal purgatory was going to kill him.

 

There was no time to rest. If this was a case, then there was a clock ticking over their heads, judging them with each minute movement of the second hand. The sooner they laughed at God, the better.

 

Dean had the same idea. He took Sam by the arm, carrying some of his weight as the lumbered up the stairs together and dropped onto the nearest bed.

 

They stared at each other for a beat. It felt like an uncategorized memory set loose in the drift of his brain of the two of them sitting around a rickety kitchenette table in the middle of Nowhere, Arkansas, with all the ingredients of a new and tricky spell before them. They had to grind up the chicken feet and add the saffron, and they would… but they always took a moment to mentally psych themselves up for the oncoming, inevitable clusterfuck. 

 

This was a little less concrete, but Sam knew by the apprehension thinning Dean’s lips that he was feeling the same way Sam was, something unspoken passing between them. 

 

That little moment made Sam even more nervous to get all of this started. He had half-formed memories, had connections with Dean, still had their entire secret language, could still read what the shift of Dean’s right knee meant where no one else could. 

 

He had been describing himself like an infant, like a blank slate, like a broken levee, but god damn it, every time he didn’t think about it, every time he didn’t make the effort or near have an anxiety attack, there was something there. There was knowledge, data, personhood.

 

“Hey.” Dean put a hand on Sam’s knee and Sam jumped, clearing away the cobwebs and zeroing back in on his brother. “You still wanna do this?”


	13. Chapter 13

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

Sam was nodding before Dean finished speaking. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Let’s uh, let’s find something, okay? And you just--start talking.”

 

Dean nodded back, frowning. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay. We don’t keep much at Bobby’s--wanna look in the car?”

 

A big part of Sam was resistant to moving an inch from where he sat. He felt a kind of safety perched on the edge of the bed tucked into the dormer of Bobby’s guest bedroom--as always, he couldn’t cite where the feeling came from in MLA format, but it was there, born from a history.

 

“There isn’t anything in here?” he asked. 

 

Dean’s face went through a micro whirlwind of expressions, and he was nodding again, standing up and bracing his hands on his hips, looking around the room with a steely expression, like if he glared at the closet long enough, some quaking old keepsake would come crawling out from the depths.

 

“There should be,” Dean said, more to himself than to Sam. Sam watched him patiently, more than comfortable to watch Dean work. He could recall that most hunts had them working together or busy tracking down separate leads--he never really had the time to truly admire what Dean could do. No matter how many times Dean might deny it or make a self deprecating joke about it, Dean was smart. He had a natural affinity for finding things that didn’t want to be found.

 

Sam watched as Dean got onto his knees--both of which cracked--and check under the bed. He’d already gone through the closet, the duffels, and the drawers, so Sam wasn’t sure where else he could look.

 

Sam watched idly as Dean’s ass stuck further into the air while Dean rifled under the bed, reaching as far as his arm would allow. Dean shuffled backward, popping out from under the bed with ruffled hair, and Sam looked away, pretending to admire the sunset setting the leaves on fire out the window.

 

Dean stood in the center of the room, frozen with indecision, before he took a breath. Sam looked over at him in in question. Dean was thinking through something. His face lit up. “A-ha!” he said, hurrying over to the desk in the nook in the corner. He kneeled by the molding along the bottom of the wall. Still staring at something Sam couldn’t see, he said, “get the lights, would you?”

 

Sam obeyed, standing and taking the two steps over to the light switch by the door. He flicked the switch, illuminating the room in the golden hue of aging CFLs. Dean knocked on the floorboards, one at a time, getting closer to the desk. He knocked on the same one several times, and stood, apparently satisfied.

 

He gestured at Sam. “Help me move this.”

 

Dean stood on one side of the desk, and Sam the other. Together, they hauled the old thing away from the corner it had been rooted in for so long, the solid wood creation groaning deeply in protest as it was dragged away from its home.

 

Sam stared down at the floor where the desk had been. Besides a rectangle of preserved, shiny hardwood, unworn from years of young boys’ boots, he didn’t see anything. 

 

Dean gestured for Sam to get down on the ground next to him. Sam bent down, watching as Dean picked at a floorboard that ended at the crown molding. It lifted under Dean’s finger like a see saw. Sam watched as Dean pulled the floorboard clean of the ground. Where the block of wood had sat was a dark little hole between two rafters. 

 

Dean pulled out a dust-covered shoebox. He held it proudly up before Sam, who promptly sneezed. Twice. He blinked, rubbing at his eyes. “What is it?” he asked.

 

“Something special,” Dean said, and that stirred a memory clean of the murk: a pre-pubescent Sam and a newly-pubescent Dean retrieving a shoe box from Bobby’s basement and drawing all over it with markers.

 

Sam brushed the dust off of the lid, sneezing again. When the thick coating was wiped clean, the drawings stood out, coming to life. A shaky but accurate guitar Dean had created, and an almost phallic, shitty spaceship that Sam had drawn. There was a sketch of the two of them and the Impala, and the puppy Bobby had found wandering the junkyard that year. Atlas. 

 

Sam smiled down at the box. “I remember making this,” he said. 

 

Dean smiled back. “Yeah?” he asked. “Any details?”

 

Sam paused, searching for more information. They drew all over it, what next? There had to be something important in it, something Dean was going to use to trigger a memory, but Sam was, as usual, drawing blanks.

 

“It’s a time capsule,” he said, the tail end of the memory popping into place out of nowhere. He and Dean had decided to make a time capsule, something to say that they were there. That they existed. 

 

“It sure is,” Dean sighed, lost in some fond memory. “We put shit in here almost every year until you left, and then we started up again when I had six months left.”

 

When he had six months left. Sam’s stomach flipped. Dean made a deal to bring him back. Dean had been given only year. A dull headache formed in his forehead, and, for the time being, he left the memory alone. 

 

“Can I open it?” Sam asked. He twiddled his fingers. “Or you can--you can open it.”

 

Dean gestured at the box, pushing it closer to Sam and spinning it around so that the lid was facing him. “Go ahead.”

 

Sam looked down at it. He did feel like a treasure hunter now, and he was staring down at some pirate’s long-lost fortune: a worn, old treasure chest. Only he was certain he was about to be caught in some kind of booby trap.

 

Sam reached out and flipped open the lid.

 

He stared down at the contents, back tensing. Nothing happened. He focused on the items on the surface--there were several letters addressed to “FUTURE DEAN” and “FUTURE SAM” in wobbly handwriting, some army men, some postcards.

 

He looked up at Dean in a silent question. Dean looked a little uncomfortable, chewing on his lip, but he nodded at Sam and offered him an encouraging smile. “Look through it,” he said. “Pick something out.”

 

“Okay,” Sam said. He felt a little guilty--Dean had all the memories for every single object crammed into the shoebox, and they were all probably gold-tinted and sweet, a moment of Them that Dean treasured. For him to watch Sam pick up things with zero recognition on his face must be tough.

 

Sam focused on the task at hand to avoid going down that cobwebby train of thought.

 

He set all the letters aside--he had a feeling he didn’t want to read the hopes and dreams of his younger self. He picked up an army man--a little green medic--rubbing the plastic between his fingers, feeling all the contours. He had lots of memories of playing with these. It was almost always him and Dean against some Big, Unseen Enemy, never him versus Dean.

 

He set aside all the army men, taking them out of the box one at a time and setting them upright on the floor until he had a small army (ha) by his side. 

 

He looked up at Dean for another brief moment, drawing comfort. Next, there was a pile of postcards. He looked through all the image sides first--motels across the country, stupid tourist traps, like The Mystery Museum, and city skylines: Indianapolis, St. Louis, Los Angeles. 

 

He flipped them over, starting with the earliest one. June first, two thousand. It was addressed to Sammy in Dean’s tilted scrawl.

 

Two thousand. Sam had memories of then, though not many. One phrase was crystal clear.

 

If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back.

 

The discovered Stanford acceptance letter and offer of a full ride. The jokes John had made, and the serious responses Sam had. John’s face sobering. Their massive argument. Dean, the usual peacemaker, silent and pale. 

 

Sam walking in the rain to the bus stop. Getting halfway there before the Impala cruised beside him, beeping until he got in. Dean driving him the rest of the way against John’s orders. Dean handing him a duffel packed with the essentials and a couple hundred bucks, most of what he’d made in pool that week.

 

Sam looked down at the letter, biting his lip, blinking his burning eyes. Dean had written this two weeks after he’d left. But he didn’t remember getting this letter. Was that the wall or something else?

 

He met Dean’s eyes from under his hair. Dean shrugged, too casual. His eyes were shiny. “I never had the balls to send ‘em,” he said.

 

Sam smoothed down the bent corner of the postcard before setting it aside. “Can I-” his breath caught. “Can I read all of these sometime?”

 

Dean nodded slowly. “Yeah, Sammy,” he said quietly. 

 

Sam looked at the next postcard. July fourth, two thousand. There was a drawing of a roman candle, and one phrase, written in uppercase: MISS YOU.

 

Sam set it aside, too. He didn’t think he could go through every single one of them--there were at least two dozen--without his throat getting full and emotions running high. He set the rest of them aside in a neat pile. 

 

Back to the box. More contents had been revealed. There was an old watch tucked into the left side. Sam hefted it in his hand--no memory of it--and set it aside. He didn’t really know what he was expecting. He was searching for something that would stir a deep feeling, but for all he knew, the things that he didn’t bat an eye at were the things with the biggest, most poignant associations.

 

There were several jewelry boxes and card boxes. Sam went through the other things first. There was a little plastic dinosaur. A triceratops. Sam held it up, smiling lopsidedly at it. No memories came to mind even though childhood things usually came easily. 

 

He gave Dean a look. Dean shrugged. “We went to the fair in Bakersberg, back in oh five,” he said. “I won that for you.”

 

Sam smiled at the dinosaur and set it down. The next thing he pulled out was a shot glass. It didn’t make him feel anything, but Dean’s breath hitched. He curled hand around it, felt the glass warm against his skin. “What’s this one?”

 

“I stole it from the Pierpont Inn in Connecticut,” Dean said. “Ring any bells?”

 

Sam set it down. “No.”

 

“We went there in oh seven,” Dean said. “You were so scared then. You thought were gonna go darkside. You got drunk and begged me to--to kill you if it got too bad. I’d just told you what Dad made me promise and you knew I wouldn’t keep his word, but if it came from you, I’d--I’d…”

 

Dean swallowed. “You… grabbed my face. I didn’t know if you were just drunk or if you felt the same.” He looked at his lap. His eyes flicked up to Sam. “That break anything loose?”

 

Sam blinked, setting the shot glass down. “No, I don’t--I want something happy,” he said, voice cracking. “I want something big.”

 

Dean sniffed. He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Here.” He reached for the box. “Can I?”

 

Sam nodded. “Please.”

 

Dean reached into the box. He pushed the watch aside and drew out a chipped mug. “This is from two weeks later,” he said. He turned it so that Sam could see the logo emblazoned on it: Romeo Motel. A little logo of a red-roofed motel, colors faded over the years.

 

“What happened then?” Sam asked.

 

Dean was still staring at the mug, turning it in his hands, jaw ticking. “You want the whole story?”

 

Sam nodded.

 

“It doesn’t really start happy,” Dean murmured. He met Sam’s eyes, handing him the mug with a small smile. “Doesn’t really end happy, either.”

 

“Then why this one?”

 

“It--it made happy happen,” Dean said. “Lemme just… I don’t even know where to start.” He laughed.

 

“What about after Pierpont?” Sam said. “Where did we go next?”

 

“We had a small case, peanuts compared to the shit we’d been dealing with with the psychic kids and Azazel,” Dean said. “It didn’t even take more’n a day. A salt and burn. A spirit haunting an elementary school in Romeo, Michigan.”

 

Sam sat back, listening intently. He watched Dean fiddle with the mug in his hands as he spoke, turning it over and back again, index finger worrying at the chip near the handle.

 

“No one had died, but a janitor landed in the hospital and some kids got bruised up,” Dean said. “After looking into it for a few hours, we were pretty certain it was the ghost of a parent of a kid who’d died there in the forties.”

 

Dean paused, scoffing and smiling at the mug. “You were kinda pissy the whole day, so we didn’t talk much while we were gettin’ information and convincing the principal to let school out early so we could do our thing.”

 

“Turned out the kids’ story that someone was buried under the playground was true,” Dean said. “A teacher had killed the kid, got away with it. The dad kept trying to uncover the truth, but he never knew the truth. Not until we came.”

 

Vague impressions flitted across Sam’s mind, leaving the barest of impressions, like the imprint of a butterfly wing in the dust. He could see the squat brown brick elementary building in his head, the slush-filled, pothole-dotted Michigan streets. 

 

“He wasn’t even mad after that,” Dean said. “He just wanted to know what happened to his kid. When he figured it out through us, he was at peace. We still burned the kids’ bones, though, just in case. You took ‘em outta the playground and buried them near the family plot, even though you didn’t have to.”

 

Dean’s voice got quieter and more fond the longer he spoke. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the mug tighter. 

 

“You were already messed up that day, so burning those tiny bones really got to you. I just wanted to help. I got home and you were full of pent up energy, all red eyed n’ tense n’ shit, and I asked you what was up. At first you wouldn’t say. But I kept pushing.”

 

Sam’s shoulders jerked as a bite-sized, potent memory hit him, all emotion, all abstractions. “I was so pissed at you,” Sam said with a slight laugh. “Jesus.”

 

“You were.” Dean didn’t sound mad. “I pushed you hard enough to make you lose it. You get angry a lot, but not like that.”

 

Sam winced. He could feel the fire coursing through his veins, the memory drawing his hands into fists. He forced himself to sit still and keep listening.

 

“You said we shouldn’t pretend Pierpont didn’t happen. That I had to face up to the promise I made. That it wasn’t just some “what if” for the distant future, that I might have to put a bullet in your head by the end of the month. Well.” Dean’s eyes flicked up to his. “Then I got pissed.”

 

“We were yellin’ our heads off,” Dean said. “You told me to get a grip, to face facts. I told you the same, told you you were the only goddamn good thing left in the universe.” 

 

Sam remembered that now, behind a growing headache. He remembered the fear and desperation he felt, how it made him cold and hot at the same time down to his bones.

 

“You made some joke about this bein’ the first time we were honest with each other while not drunk. I fired back about how touchy you got when you were drunk… shitty on my part.” Dean ducked his head.

 

“Something in you just kinda broke. It was then I saw that you weren’t angry with me, you were scared shitless. You sat on the carpet, huggin’ yer knees, leaning back against the bed… I didn’t even think. I just got down next to you, held you. Told you it was okay to be scared-”

 

Dean’s voice cut off abruptly, and Sam blinked, feeling stretched out, feeling condensed, feeling both light and heavy at once. He was there, he was in the memory, he was ten years in the past.

 

The motel mattress was digging into his back, but it was just a satellite feeling compared to the absolute maelstrom ravaging his mind. He hugged his knees, curling his toes into the worn carpet, not knowing if he should learn into Dean’s arms at his side or claw them off of him.

 

“Sammy,” Dean said roughly, and something in those two syllables was so desperate that Sam had to turn and look at Dean. Dean pet Sam, brushing his hair out of his face. Dean worried at his lip. “I know how scared you are. It’s okay. This is all so goddamn scary.” A short laugh, holding back tears. “Even for me.”

 

“Just cut the crap, okay?” Sam croaked. He could barely see through the tears but he glared at Dean anyway. “You keep saying you’re gonna protect me, gonna save me. It’s just words. What about when the time comes?” he took a shuddering breath, throat closing up. “Don’t tell me it’ll never happen. Bullshit.”

 

Dean didn’t speak for a long time. His arms didn’t leave Sam’s shoulders. Sam closed his eyes, feeling endlessly more tired with each moment that passed. He was all tight and sore inside, grief begging to leave him, secrets wanting to fall from his lips, but he had to keep it all in. Had to.

 

“I would rather die a million times than hurt you,” Dean croaked. “And I know I--I’m not always good to you. But you’re… you’re so good, Sammy. Better’n me in every way. I can’t stand hearin’ this.”

 

Sam took a shuddery sigh, tilting his head back against the mattress, staring at watery stains on the ceiling. “I’m not good,” he said softly, thinking of the the way his entire body sang every time Dean drew near him, how he had always thought he’d never be able to feel love until he realized he’d been feeling it in his bones his whole life. He thought of how Dean held him at Pierpont, how he blindly sought Dean’s embrace, how Dean kept him at a careful distance, a brotherly distance.

 

“I know exactly what you’re thinkin’,” Dean growled, “and it’s not true.”

 

Sam couldn’t help but laugh. “You don’t,” he said. “I’m already a monster.”

 

“Sammy.” Dean’s voice was intense. He took Sam by the shoulders, physically moving him until they were face to face, inches away. Sam couldn’t breathe. “If that makes you one, then so am I.”

 

Dean didn’t know what he was talking about. Sam shook his head. He tried to draw back, but Dean held him there. Dean was shaking. His eyes flitted between Sam’s, pupils blown, his entire face painted in an expression so intense that Sam just got lost in it.

 

A moment later and lips were on his, Dean’s hand curled in the material of his shirt so tightly it was almost choking him. Sam couldn’t tell who had started it. Sam broke it off and was up and backing away half a second later, heartbeat running wild in his chest. He couldn’t speak, just stared at Dean, disbelieving.

 

“Sammy,” Dean said raggedly, “I’m just as scared as you are.”

 

“Do you still promise?” Sam asked. Dean’s eyebrows shot up in confusion but drew back down in anger. “Do you still promise,” Sam repeated insistently.

 

“I promise to save you,” Dean said. “And if I can’t save you, I promise… I promise.”

 

Sam nodded. “Good,” he said. “Do you mean it?”

 

Dean stepped back into Sam’s space. “I meant all of it.”

 

Sam was antsy, hopeful, and absolutely, completely dreaming. He had to be. “But I’m…” he bit his lip. “I’m me. And you’re… you.” Before Dean could protest, he added, “you don’t even know all of it,” thinking of the complex dynamic of his identity, his confused teenage years.

 

Dean placed his hands carefully on Sam’s hips, looking adorably nervous. “Don’t care,” he said. “We’re not like other people, it doesn’t have to work like other people.”

 

Sam let out a breath. “If you’re sure,” he said. “I--I want this, but, with everything that’s going on--”

 

Dean’s lips were on him before he could finish. He swallowed his fear and opened his mouth, letting Dean kiss him, letting him forget his pain for a moment. 

 

Dean held him close, Dean whispered things in his ear to make his heart stop rabbiting. This was another side of Dean, someone kept very securely under wraps, someone sensitive and wanting. It made Sam feel a small bubble of hope rise in him, like maybe Dean could understand, like maybe Dean could get to know all of Sam.

 

And love her, too.


	14. Chapter 14

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

 

Sam’s back felt like shit. It was like when a ghost had flung a baseball bat at her spine all those years ago. She’d felt like an old man for weeks after that incident, fearing permanent damage.

 

“Sammy?” a groggy voice asked. Sam sat up carefully, blinking as her vision swam. When she could see clearly again, the dizzy fog lifting, she turned her eyes to Dean, who was curled up in the bed beside her.

 

She had a considerable headache. Her back hurt. She had little scabs on her palm from where her nails had dug in too deeply. Her memories were vague at best, though, and she tried to think of the last thing she’d done--

 

Her body went hot all over, animal fear sending adrenaline racing through her veins. The last thing she’d done was pain. Just pain. Pain and fear, being turned inside out, shamed, forgotten.

 

Dean was saying something. She focused on him again and realized she was panting. Dean’s face was scrunched up in worry. One of his hands was hovering over her shoulder. “You okay?” he murmured urgently. “Did you remember something?”

 

“I…” Sam tasted saliva. She vaulted out of bed, but didn’t make it to the toilet. She folded, crumbling to her hands and knees, and puked on the tile floor of the bathroom. Dean was at her side immediately, a hand pressing firmly into her back. She hissed in pain.

 

“What is it?” Dean asked. “Sammy, what can I do?”

 

“Move your hand,” Sam said, and Dean lifted his hand up.

 

“Shit. Sorry about that.”

 

“I hurt my back,” Sam said, squeezing her eyes tightly shut as the headache started pounding in time with her heart. “How?”

 

“You sort of had a seizure,” Dean said, a little too mildly. “The memory box--you remember that?”

 

“I--” Sam got lightheaded and made it to the toilet this time before retching up what was left inside her stomach. “I remember everything,” she sighed, leaning her forehead against the cool porcelain.

 

“Everything?” Dean was fighting to control his tone. “You mean--like--”

 

Sam slouched in the corner of the bathroom, just focusing on her breathing. “Like hell, like identity stuff,” she sighed. “Can I have some Advil?”

 

Dean was silent for a moment. After a few beats, she heard him get up and rummage around under the sink. Then the sink running. He came back and pressed a few round pills into her hand. He helped her sit up and she swallowed them down. He handed her a glass of water and she took a few grateful sips. When staying upright proved to require too much effort, she rested her head on the toilet seat again, and Dean left her side, cleaning up the bathroom.

 

She awoke to the sensation of lifting, and found herself in Dean’s arms. He hummed absentmindedly as he dropped her in bed and got in after her. “Murgh,” she groaned, and he stopped humming. “You should get some air. Probably not fun to hang around in bed with a pukey lady.”

 

“Eh,” Dean drew the blanket up over her shoulders. “Definitely an improvement.”

 

Sam smiled sleepily, stretching her limbs as Dean wrapped his arms around her.

 

“Sam?” Dean whispered right as Sam was drifting closer and closer to sleep. She hummed in response. “I’m here, okay? No matter what.”

 

“I know,” she replied, burying her nose in his soft skin, breathing in his scent. “I know,” she said, and for the first time in a long time--maybe even forever--she believed it.

 

Sam drifted off to sleep, lulled into blackness, protected from nightmares by the most faithful guardian in the world.

 

***

 

Sam wished she could say it was only up from there, but she had gotten exactly what she bargained for.

 

Every day new memories came. Every day things clicked into place just a little bit more. Every day her feelings for Dean strengthened, and her confusing gender identity felt a little less life-and-death. 

 

That was all nice. It didn’t feel strange or harrowing when she was her or him--it was just like Dean said, and he couldn’t stop smugly reminding her of that fact--she was always Sam. Dean would always love Sam. 

 

That was one belief that could ground her no matter what circumstances she found herself in.

 

Like now, for example. 

 

In saner moments, if she thought it through logically, then she’d been in hell for at least 200 years, though based on the inklings she got, it felt like much longer, like time didn’t just run slower there, it didn’t exist. That made the majority of her memories of hell. So if memories came through one at a time, or in clumps, spurred by a passage in a book or a vague reference, then it would make sense that at least some of them would come from hell.

 

There was a little bit more to it, though--a lot of her hell memories were the same. Lucifer was a very patient torturer. She kind of had the gist already, and things that had spurred the worst memories weeks ago--the panic room and a cold hand on the back in the middle of the night--no longer had the same potency.

 

She’d walked in on Bobby and Dean discussing her, once. They’d likened her little “zone-outs,” as they had been dubbed, to a veteran’s PTSD. Dean had gotten a lot of similar comparisons in that year after hell, when he was still walking on glass shards everywhere he went.

 

She was just coming out of one now, shivering endlessly. She didn’t know where she was, only that she had run off to find a dark place, a small place, a hidden place, and she was there now. The space was only big enough to fit her if she drew her knees up to her chest and bent over them, curled into a tight ball. 

 

She wished she could tilt her head back and close her eyes, but no. Her neck was killing her. She pressed her cheek into her knee and a violent shiver overtook her. She panted and the air around her was warm and stale. There was a single, weak beam of light coming in from a crack somewhere, but other than that, it was pitch black.

 

She was so fucking cold. In the back of her mind, she knew where she really was wasn’t cold. Not that cold, at least. Her shirt was plastered to her back with sweat. But the fucking memories.

 

They followed her, good and bad, all the same. Right now, she was hiding from the devil.

 

She could still feel freezing breath puffing out against the side of her face as he came up behind her and laughed. She could still feel it in her bones, the strain in her muscles from running from a predator that outlasted her every time. 

 

No. She had been thinking about something else, anything else, fuck. There was one thing. Nothing else. One thing she held in her hands to keep warm, a firefly trapped in a mason jar.

 

Dean. Her shoulders loosened. Dean loved her. Dean was here. She was out. She got out. She was reliving memories, but Dean was her tether. 

 

She had to get out of this fucking hole.

 

Sam tried to stretch out, testing the limits of her container with her toes and elbows. Tight, but yielding. Something groaned against her elbow. She touched blindly at the dark walls of her enclosure. Rough. Wood, maybe. Worn.

 

She put her hands on the ceiling and pushed. The top was a lid and raised up about a quarter of an inch, letting a sliver of light shine directly into her eyes. She squinted until her eyes adjusted. Blue siding. The kitchen windows. Bobby’s house. She was in a wooden box in the backyard, and the latch was shut.

 

She could remember a little more clearly, now. She’d been bombarded with a memory of being a rabbit. An endurance hunter chased her forever and when he would finally get to her, she’d be trembling and weak and sick to her stomach and he’d gobble her up. She’d started running, and found a place to hide.

 

How she’d gotten the latch shut she had no idea.

 

She stuck her fingers out of the box opening and tried to feel for the latch. Her fingertips hit cold metal, and she fumbled around, trying to unlatch the damn thing. She couldn’t get enough of her hands out to do it properly.

 

She was stuck.

 

Sam drew in a breath, swallowing past a dry mouth. She was beginning to feel suffocated. 

 

She closed her eyes, taking measured breaths. She could breathe. It was a comfortable temperature outside, with daylight left to spare. She was in the hose box in the backyard. Someone would find her. It was… she tried to check her watch. The backlight was broken. She couldn’t read it. She didn’t know what time it was, or even what day, but she was Sam Winchester, and she was fine.

 

Sam took a moment to feel small, going still, then knocked repeatedly on the lid of the box with both of her fists. From the inside, the noise sounded considerable, but she knocked harder all the same, scraping her knuckles against the unpolished wood, knocking faster and faster.

 

Her knuckles split, burning with a sharp but tolerable pain, and she paused. Dean wouldn’t want her to fuck her hands up too badly. She knocked even more desperately, then waited, straining to hear a door open, someone calling her name, anything, but there was nothing.

 

She could knock the thing over. On her side, she could use her leg strength to bust the thing open. She’d break the latch, but she could easily fix it for Bobby later.

 

Sam leaned to the right, then threw herself to to the left with as much vigor as she could. The box danced for a moment, but settled, still upright. Not enough strength then. Shoulder throbbing, she tried again, putting all her weight into it.

 

The box tipped over and Sam felt the world go sideways. She braced her feet, ready to rabbit-kick her way out of trouble. A beat later, the box went upright again. 

 

She heard the scratching of the latch opening and then the lid was opened above her head. She blinked at the onset of sunset, eyes quickly adjusting to Dean standing over her, brow furrowed.

 

Sam stared back at him, shrinking back. Had her mantra included Dean loving her even when she did shit like this?

 

Dean held his hand out. Sam reached up and took it, and together, they hauled Sam to her feet. Sam straightened out, back popping, knees popping. She stepped out of the hose box, stretching her limbs, tilting her head back to catch the warm sunlight on her face like a bear coming out of hibernation.

 

She turned to Dean after taking a moment to breathe. He was staring at her, head cocked, but he didn’t look pissed or freaked out. If anything, he looked annoyingly patient. 

 

“Better?” Dean asked.

 

Sam nodded. “It’s a… good hiding place,” she offered.

 

Dean nodded, eyes flicking over to the ajar hose box. “I don’t know how you even fit in the damn thing,” he said. 

 

Sam laughed, going red. “I was pretty motivated.”

 

Dean coiled up Bobby’s hose and tossed it back into the box, flipping the lid and latching it. “Let’s stick to just putting hoses in there from now on.” He grabbed her hand and walked her to the back door. Copper was pawing at the screen door, and even in the dim lighting of the inside of the house, Sam could see her tail wagging. Dean opened the door and Copper went over to Sam, sniffing her all over. Sam bent, offering Copper her hands, and she sniffed them intently, licking sawdust and blood off of Sam’s fingers.

 

They marched in a parade to the kitchen. Dean washed Sam’s hands with warm water from the sink. In the laundry room, they refilled Copper’s food and water bowls and got the tweezers to pull a splinter out of Sam’s knuckle.

 

Sam sat on a stool in the kitchen while Dean held her hand, touch tender, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration. With the precision of a mechanic--or a hunter--he pulled the splinter out and tossed it in the sink. A moment later, he was rubbing salve on her knuckles, applying band-aids where he could. 

 

“All done,” Dean said, wiping off his hands with a dish towel and standing up. Sam spread her hands out, admiring Dean’s handiwork. She smiled up at him, feeling a little bashful. “I’m like the lion with the thorn in his paw,” she said.

 

“You’re just as freakin’ big,” Dean said as he packed up Bobby’s non-emergency home medical kit. “But I’m not a mouse. I’m a panther.”

 

Sam laughed. “You sure are,” she said. Dean shot her a glare at the tone she was using before putting everything away. 

 

Sam hopped off the stool and returned it to its place. Dean walked over to her. They looked at each other, something nonverbal zinging between them. Sam walked to the front door, peering out at the porch, the yard, and the gravel driveway beyond it.

 

No rusted Chevelle.

 

Dean’s hand brushed at her ass as he came up behind her, looking out the window and confirming it for himself. “We home alone?”

 

Sam nodded, giving him a tiny smile. Her heart was speeding up again, her body going on, but she wasn’t being chased. Ideally, she would be chasing something pretty soon.

 

Dean read her easily. His shoulders went loose, his body exuding relaxation and cockiness. “We probably have a couple of hours,” he said, too casually, “if you’re okay.”

 

“I’m okay.” Sam tried not to look too eager. “Promise.” She stared at Dean’s lopsided smile and saw the same smile in a watery memory, in Dean taking her out for a date at a silly Italian chain restaurant and blowing her after.

 

Those memories were her favorite. She thought back to when she learned that she and Dean had been more, how it shocked her, how none of her faint memories had even a trace of that touch. How it was so ingrained in her now.

 

How worth it it was to have every single marathon fuck of theirs crowding up her brain. Take the good with the bad, the bad with the good… each day, new memories came, hellish and heaven sent. 

 

She was Sam, and oh god, was it worth it to remember.

 

Even Dean’s happiness every single time Sam asked “remember when…?” was worth it. He’d been committed to him, to the bony amnesiac, and he’d loved Dean back, but sharing in what they’d had before, in knowing how deeply-rooted and established their tangled-up thing was, was something else entirely. 

 

She was still him, sometimes, but he remembered, too, and he’d had his fair share of stolen touches. 

 

Right now, though, she was all woman, and her body was singing for Dean’s touch.

 

It was a bit ironic to have a head crowded with tons of recent, old memories when she couldn’t even remember the two of them going up the stairs or going into their room or peeling their shirts off, but here they were, sprawled on one of the beds, Sam’s leg hitched up, and Dean on top of her, hands running up and down her stomach, lips stealing her breath.

 

Sam closed her eyes, sinking into the sensations, panting into Dean’s mouth, kissing him back with a vigor that made her lightheaded. She allowed her own hands to wander, diving headfirst out of her shell, bumping fingers across his spine, down to his jeans, his belt, the top of his ass.

 

Dean pulled back just far enough to meet Sam’s eyes. Their chests heaved in sync, eyes dark and blown, glued to each other, unblinking. At the same instant, they reached for each other’s belts, fumbling, messing up, unable to think properly with blood draining south in record time.

 

Somehow, they got each other’s pants off, thrown across the room. They drew each other into another deep kiss, and then Dean’s boxers and Sam’s panties were gone, too.

 

She lay beneath him, naked and revealed, staring up at him, biting her lip. Her entire body was alive, sparks turning to flames wherever Dean touched her, like he could turn her entire body into one electric erogenous zone. 

 

Dean put a hand on her hip, nails digging in, squeezing her. His lids were lowered, his mouth open. “You sure?” he rumbled quietly, waiting for her consent.

 

Sam’s mind went through a million awful possibilities--all related to poorly-timed, shitty memories deciding to resurface, drawn out of the shadows by an accidental touch or just plain nerves--but more than her fear, more than her anxiety, she felt need in a way she hadn’t since--since, fuck, since before it all. 

 

This is what all of her sexual memories were like, incomprehensibly needy, craving Dean, but experiencing it in live time was another thing altogether. She nodded jerkily, hair falling into her face with how eager she was.

 

Take the good with the bad. Nothing could draw her out of this high. Nothing could touch her except Dean. She was invincible when she was with him. As long as she could believe that…

 

“Touch me,” she said, breathless and high, and Dean gave her a look so full of want that her entire body twitched, cock filling to full hardness.

 

He kissed her roughly before pressing his lips to her pulse point, mouth wandering. He nibbled his way from her throat to the edge of her jaw, under her ear, sucking a hickey into the flesh there. She shivered. Dean’s hands were stroking at the downy hairs on her stomach, and at her response, her choked-off gasps, his hands strayed lower.

 

Sam groaned the moment Dean’s capable hands wrapped around her.

 

It was like she’d constructed mountains around her and they all fell down at once, completely leveled. She’d denied herself pleasure. Dean embodied it.

 

Hands shaking, she reciprocated, finding her way to Dean’s thick cock by sense memory alone. He was hot and hard, already leaking, and they stroked each other, kissing roughly, teeth clicking, lips swollen, desperate and messy.

 

It was over much faster than Sam would’ve liked. Her hips bucked into Dean’s touch, and fuck, he knew just how to undo her, just where to apply pressure, thumbling the underside of the head of her cock, making her entire body sweat.

 

She moaned into his mouth, unable to censor herself. In any other state, she’d be embarrassed at how loud she was, but she couldn’t care, occupied with the high Dean was giving her. She stroked him harder and faster, and he swore over and over again, dropping his head to her shoulder, lips pressed against a jut of bone there but not kissing, not biting. He breathed against her skin, and they came together, hands pulling faster and faster, becoming slicked with come. They stroked each other through the climax. Sam held onto Dean for dear life, clipped whimpers leaving her throat as he worked her through her orgasm.

 

They lay together for ages after that, still plastered together, glued by drying come, saliva all over their faces, bruises and scrapes down their throats and backs. They were a mess.

 

Dean got up after a while. They shared an intense look before breaking out into smiles. Dean was proud, a purring cat, satisfied and loose, and Sam felt a little like Dean had just taken her virginity.

 

They heard the rumbling of a familiar engine and, with effort, got up and cleaned themselves up.


	15. Chapter 15

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

They were down in time for dinner, and they reverted to siblingly banter, Bobby watching them and shaking his head at their antics.

 

***

 

Days turned into weeks, and they established a new normal. Sam worked on her brain, Dean worked with Bobby, and they traded their time on and off, just siblings when Bobby was around, but so much more when he was off helping other hunters or gathering supplies. 

 

Sam was getting a little antsy. Despite how she felt about hunting, about their history, staying in one place was getting to her. She craved a stretch of her wings, wanted the mile markers flying past as they blazed a path across the ‘States. Staying at Bobby’s was another trial of its own--no matter how much Bobby loved them, Sam could tell they were wearing him down.

 

He left more and more often. She couldn’t decide if it was to give them privacy, which had some mildly nauseating connotations, or because they were a fucking handful. Hell, she alone was two handfuls. They’d stayed with him for longer stretches than this as kids, but they were all older now, including Bobby. 

 

She had promised herself a new life. There were unpredictable things ahead of her. It didn’t matter the context, the situation--she belonged by Dean’s side in the Impala. 

 

It was just a matter of when, and what. Okay, and a little bit of how. There was a lot to figure out. If they were going to end up sticking around anywhere, they needed identities. Social security numbers not linked to deceased murderers. She needed to figure out how not to be a flight risk--or how to fly safely.

 

“Hey.” Dean tapped her on the shoulder. She blinked, coming out of the cobwebs, and smiled at him.

 

“Hey.”

 

Dean held up a toolbox. “Gimme a hand?”

 

Sam raised an eyebrow. “I could’ve sworn I did earlier.”

 

“Heh.” Dean’s face was all cheesy glee. “You sure did. Come on.”

 

He jerked his head toward the front door before heading out. She followed him out into the sunny yard and over to the Impala. The hood was popped open. Dean set the toolkit down and bent over, inspecting a component of the engine. Sam inspected his ass.

 

“Doing maintenance?” she asked.

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, distracted. He reached down and peered at something. “Hand me a flashlight?”

 

Sam popped open the toolkit and found a penlight. She placed it in Dean’s outstretched hand. He went back to work, reading some gauge.

 

“Thought it might be time,” Dean said, still elbow-deep in Baby, “you never know when we’ll need her in ship-shape.”

 

“You never know,” Sam echoed. “You think it might be soon?”

 

Dean straightened. He gazed at her. “You think?”

 

She shrugged. She didn’t know. She’d been thinking about it recently, of course, and a drive would do her some good, but she didn’t think she’d be employed by the end of the month.

 

Dean nodded, satisfied with her response, agreeing with her. “Still, it’s good to keep her healthy.” Dean affectionately patted a headlight. “Wire crimp?”

 

It took Sam a moment to process he was asking her a question. She dug through the tools and handed him the correct one.

 

Dean went back to work while Sam’s mind wandered. She looked down at herself. She had gained some more weight. Running laps didn’t wind her as much as it used to, and Bobby had gotten them some proper weights to use instead of encyclopedias. 

 

When they get up and start over again (Sam forced herself not to say “if”), one of the first things Sam wanted to do was buy some new damn clothes. The ones she had now were years old, motheaten, and overbearingly masculine. In some new life, she didn’t have to limit herself to Carhartt.

 

Sam had worn a purple shirt with a greyhound on it as a dress when she was a child. She quickly grew into and out of the shirt, and hadn’t put on a dress since, barring a few outstanding situations. 

 

She had the sense memory of a soft, pleated skirt dancing against her bare thighs. She could see warmth in Dean’s eyes, crinkling up at the corners, complimenting her wardrobe choice. 

 

That one memory was soft and worn, preserved in the center of her heart. She wanted to make it a reality, over and over again.

 

The Impala’s engine turned over, headlights flashing on. Sam jumped, looking over to see Dean sitting behind the wheel of the car looking like a kid who’d won the lottery. He strummed his fingers on the wheel, grinning from ear-to-ear, before rolling down the window. “AC’s workin’ for the first time in six years,” Dean offered. “Down for a ride?”

 

Sam got into the passenger seat, sighing as she leaned back against a seat that was molded to her frame. Dean backed the car out of Bobby’s drive and pulled out onto the road, heading toward town. Sam popped open the glove compartment, selecting an Aerosmith cassette in a broken case to slide into the tape deck.

 

“Back in the Saddle” blared through the speakers, Dean’s enthusiastic “yes!” just barely audible over the lyrics. 

 

Sam leaned back and smiled, looking out the window as Dean sang along to the song, voice cracking where Steven Tyler screeched like a cat in heat. She watched the trees blur past, listening to Dean and the speakers, letting everything slip into a comfortable haze. 

 

***

 

He awoke to Dean shaking him by the shoulder. He sat up, making a groggy noise of confusion, wiping saliva on his sleeve. He blinked at Dean, who was watching him and shaking his head. “Dude, you fell asleep,” Dean said. “On our christening road trip.”

 

Sam yawned, stretching. He didn’t feel like he’d gotten any sleep. He had a minor headache, and a mild sickly, sticky feeling, like he’d been under for ages, kept still, and now he was moving, and time was moving, and he was disoriented. It was like the dozens of times he’d fallen asleep due to pure exhaustion while studying at the kitchenette table somewhere in the Midwest and waking up at eight P.M., frantically getting ready for school, thinking he had already missed first period only to see Dean and John eating dinner, not breakfast.

 

Something niggled impatiently at the back of his mind as he and Dean got out of the car. They were parked in front of a bar, a place that vaguely rang a few bells, in downtown Sioux Falls and the sun was setting. He ignored the feeling as they walked into the establishment. Dean got them booth seats, flagging down a busty waitress and ordering them two beers. 

 

Sam watched her bat her eyelashes at Dean with a frown. Dean leaned back in the booth, sitting opposite to Sam. He stretched his arm across the back of the seat and gave Sam a cocky grin. “God,” Dean said. “It’s fuckin’ hard to look at Bobby’s Blue Label all day without drinking any. Thought we could use a drink.”

 

Sam nodded. He’d been so worried about Dean’s (prior) penchant for drowning his sorrows in liquor that the concept of going out for a celebratory beer or two was entirely foreign. Bobby had emptied their fridge of beer in a touching, accommodating gesture, so it had been a long time since either of them had touched any alcohol.

 

He still wasn’t completely on board with the idea, but it was so them, and it was making Dean happy, and fuck if that didn’t keep Sam from voicing his concerns. He didn’t think either of them could slip into nasty habits in a night, even if they got blackout drunk, but the animal part of his brain was wide awake, listening, alert to any hint of danger. He wouldn’t be able to lower his hackles all night.

 

The waitress came back with their beers and Sam took them and thanked her before she could get any ideas. Dean watched him do it while trying to hide a smile. Sam melted. He could at least pretend he was clear-headed and lazy-limbed. They opened their beers, raising them in a toast. They clinked the necks together in silent acknowledgement of how much effort it took to get here, and drank.

 

Sam tried not to make a face at the taste of the beer. It really had been awhile. It took half the bottle to disappear down his stomach for him to feel any sort of effects. By the time the bottle was empty, he was feeling a little loose, a little giggly, and Dean was opening mocking him for it.

 

“Jee-zus,” Dean said, taking another swing. “We take a minor commercial break and you’re already a lightweight.”

 

“Shaddup,” Sam fired back. “M’can handle it.”

 

Dean gave him a look. “Okay.”

 

Sam returned the look. “Okay,” he parroted, watching Dean roll his eyes in joking irritation. He raised a hand to the waitress, and after a few beats, she threaded her way past tables of people over to him.

 

Sam confidently ordered a second beer for both of them, watching Dean eye him up and down as he did.

 

The drinks arrived. The waitress smiled, making brief small talk with Dean, and met Sam’s gaze head on with a look of irritation, looking at him like he wasn’t worth her time. Sam watched her go. Dean was laughing. Sam turned back to him, and they raised their glasses. Sam took a drink. The second bottle hit him much harder. He was grateful for the distraction.

 

The world became a tilt-a-whirl. They talked--Dean said something, Sam responded--but Sam couldn’t for the life of him figure out what they talked about. All that matter was that it dissolved into laughter, into covert games of footsie, Sam winking possessively at the waitress when she tried to make eye contact with Dean.

 

Sam got up to take a piss, stumbling his way over like he hadn’t gotten his sea legs yet. He leaned his forehead against the cool tile walls above the urinal, closing his eyes and sighing as he emptied his bladder.

 

He was in a shadowy, blurry place next. It was dark and loud and absolutely reeked. Sam was bumped, one shoulder, then the next, and he kept turning around and around, trying to find the source, but there was no one there. He was crowded in on all sides, but no one had eyes.

 

Sam swallowed past an acidic feeling in his throat, squinting. No matter what he did, he couldn’t see more clearly, eyes wouldn’t adjust to the light. A snake curled around his forearm, tight as a vice, and then he was sliding sideways through time. 

 

He was in a new place, a colder place, and his back hit something rough. Bricks, a detached part of his brain helpfully supplied. Hands on his shoulders pushed him to his knees. 

 

Sam closed his eyes against the onset of waves. The awful taste was back. A loud buzzing noise came from above. His knees were hurting something awful but he couldn’t move, couldn’t alleviate the pain. Something was keeping him there.

 

Nothing made sense. Sam tried to fight back but his limbs had been replaced with lead. He was sinking, down and down, and there was no chance of getting out, of getting up, of finding light again.

 

The devil laughed in his face and he flinched, closing his eyes. A zipper was unzipped and Sam was resistant. He didn’t want to be marked, to be stained, didn’t want charcoal in his stomach again. He didn’t want his entrails decorating the party table.

 

The air went cold and Sam scrambled backward with renewed energy. He pressed against the hard surface behind him, He knew if he tried hard enough he could get through it and wake up.

 

He knocked his head backward, but he saw sparks, not light. He tried again. Someone grabbed him and he screamed. Something touched his face and he tried to escape the razors. The buzzing noise was back, closer, more insistent, and the razors never cut him. They traced his jawbone, touching gently, soft, smooth. Not sharp.

 

Sam tried to get the words out, but they never came, not when he needed them the most. It was so dark. So cold. He was small. He’d never been here, never made to come out. Only her. She was the only one dragged into the back and twisted into a million different shapes.

 

He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t know what this place was, and yet he did. He knew it all. He’d been woken up alongside her. He was her. He knew this place, knew--

 

He let out an involuntary whimper when it hit him. Dean.

 

Dean was somewhere. Dean existed. Sam had to get out of the dark.

 

He tried to fight against the constraints holding him back, but they only held firm, squeezing his hands, murmuring something in his ear. Something familiar. Something recognizable.

 

Before Sam could figure any of it out, the whole universe gave out from under him.


	16. Chapter 16

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The pain and disorientation Sam awoke to was all too familiar. He kept his eyes closed, his features relaxed, ignoring the urge to grimace that came from the pounding in his head, the thick headache swathed across his forehead. 

 

He took stock of his faculties. He was in a bed. The back of his head stung, the front ached. Mild pains all over his body, from his shoulder blades to his knuckles and knees. Something cool touched his forehead.

 

“I know you’re awake.”

 

A rough voice that Sam reacted to without question. His eyes fluttered open, and he squinted past a sharp light that made the throbbing in his head increase. When his eyes adjusted, he met Dean’s gaze. Dean was sitting at his bedside, leaning over him, face crinkled up in worry. Dean wasn’t even bothering to hide it, openly wet-eyed.

 

Something must be wrong.

 

It was the first cogent thought that struck Sam. He tried to sit up, but Dean had a hand on his shoulder before he got very far. 

 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Dean cooed. “I wouldn’t try that just yet. You got knocked around real good.”

 

Knocked around…? Sam wracked his thoughts. They’d been in this situation so many times before that they had a goddamn procedure for it. First things first. Last thing he could remember. God. Every memory was like looking through the bottom of an amber beer bottle.

 

Drinking. He’d been drinking with Dean. And then what?

 

“Did I--” Sam coughed and licked his lips, grimacing at the fuzzy dryness in his mouth. “Did I drink too much?”

 

A pause. Dean leaned away, grabbing a glass of water from the nightstand. Even after he gave it to Sam, he kept his hands around it, his fingers warm on Sam’s. Sam had new band-aids on his fingers.

 

Sam’s hands trembled as he raised the glass and took a few sips. When he felt a little less like death, he dropped his arms, allowing Dean to take the glass away. Sam watched Dean the whole time, picking out little bits of his composure that spelled trouble--how he only really looked at Sam out of the corners of his eyes, how his shoulders were tight, face drawn.

 

“Did something happen?” Sam asked, watching Dean control his features.

 

Dean ducked his head. One of his hands played with the comforter covering Sam. “Yeah,” he said tonelessly. “Something happened.”

 

Sam swallowed past his nerves. In the back of his mind, throughout their conversation, he kept trying to remember any details that could piece the puzzle together, but his mind was frustratingly blank. He swallowed back bile. He felt an intense deja-vu. It was like coming back all over again. He was sick of being half a person.

 

“Dean,” he pleaded, voice cracking.

 

Dean gave him a look that shut him up. Dean closed his eyes, hiding any possibility of tears by leaning into Sam’s space, holding onto him and pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. “I’m so sorry, Sammy.”

 

“It’s not your fault,” Sam replied without thinking, voice distant. “Just tell me.”

 

Dean leaned back, sniffing, roughly scrubbing his face with the back of his hand. He brushed fingers through Sam’s hair until he was satisfied. “I--I just thought you couldn’t handle your beer at first,” Dean said. “You remember being at the bar, havin’ drinks?”

 

Sam nodded, biting his lip. “What then?”

 

Dean’s face darkened. Sam had seen that look before. Anyone who was the subject of that look had a slim chance of making it to the next day. “You remember the waitress?”

 

A few snapshots came to him then--her eager flirting with Dean, her absolute disdain for Sam. “Yeah,” he said, smiling faintly. “I cockblocked her.”

 

Dean snorted, but he didn’t look like he found the situation humorous. “She spiked your drink.”

 

Sam’s stomach flopped. “Oh.” He let out a nervous laugh. “So it wasn’t me--”

 

“I should’ve recognized the signs,” Dean butted in. “Dad always grilled us, ‘always watch your drink, watch for eyes drooping, uncoordinated--’”

 

“It wasn’t your fault.” Sam tried sitting up. Dean leaned over him to help. They rearranged his pillows until he could lean against the headboard with his head injury still pillowed. “I’m probably a lightweight now anyway.”

 

“Yeah, well.” Dean chewed on his lip. His eyes went distant. His hands clenched and unclenched. Sam let Dean process, just watching, not pushing. Whatever happened next was difficult to get out, and Sam didn’t really want to know, but just like before--he had to know.

 

“You went to the bathroom,” Dean continued, letting out a long breath, “and some prick took advantage of you.”

 

“Took--” Sam couldn’t get it out at first. This time, it was Dean’s turn to wait and watch as Sam forced himself to speak. “Took advantage of me?”

 

“I stopped him,” Dean rushed to add, but Sam was already lightheaded. He got his breathing under control and then waved Dean on. He eyed the trash can by the bedside, swallowing back an influx of saliva.

 

“I don’t know if he and the waitress had worked something out, but he must’a caught you leaving the bathroom, dragged you to the alley.”

 

Sam went cold. He could feel the bricks through the back of his shirt and shifted, trying to get comfortable. The comforter was too hot and he pushed it down to his waist. 

 

“I started gettin’ worried when you didn’t come back right away. When I checked the bathroom and you weren’t there, I--I freaked. I searched the whole damn place. It was so crowded. I kept shouting your name. When I didn’t see you, I ran outside.”

 

Dean looked away. Sam could feel his own heart stuttering. “I saw two figures and I just… ran.” Dean’s voice was faint. He sounded sick to his stomach. “You were on your knees. He was trying to, uh, he was a--attempting to force you…”

 

“I get the idea,” Sam said, quiet.

 

“I got him off’a you, then decked him. I was so fucking pissed I couldn’t see straight. I broke his nose then ground it into his face. He’s probably dead.” Dean said the last sentence without affect. “You were… you were having an episode.”

 

Sam leaned over, and Dean got the trash can under him in time for Sam to vomit into it. Sam gagged, back straining, head pounding, and shut his eyes against an onslaught of emotions, a hidden riptide drawing him under and keeping him there, away from oxygen, from the surface.

 

He could remember more clearly, now, but the memory was behind a drugged blur. Sam was thankful for it--without it, he might get pushed under again, and it might be even more difficult to come back up for air. He remembered feeling confused, feeling scared, being unable to see or control himself. He remembered feeling Lucifer all around him. 

 

Now he knew the context, knew where the fear stemmed from, what was actually happening when his brain ceded control to the pain and the fear.

 

“You okay?” Dean asked, more to fill the unbearable silence than anything else. They both knew Sam’s answer. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Sam rasped.

 

Dean’s face flashed. “Shut up,” he said. “You couldn’t have helped it.”

 

Sam shook his head. “We should be able to have a night out without my marbles scattering across the floor.”

 

“We’re--” Dean closed his eyes, squared his shoulders. He looked at Sam. “We’re workin’ on it. I was prepared for something to happen, Sammy. You’re okay. A little banged up, but we got out.”

 

“We got out,” Sam echoed, not sure how much stock he put into that sentence. “We got out.”

 

Dean’s arms were around him then. Dean was holding him too tightly, and he hissed. Dean moved his hands lower, lightened up a little, but kept his face buried in Sam’s neck. Sam closed his eyes, holding onto Dean, nose pressed against the soft material of Dean’s shirt collar. He breathed in the smell of him, letting it wash through him. He took deeper breaths, curling his fingers in the material of Dean’s shirt.

 

Dean pulled back just far enough to wipe a tear off Sam’s cheek, their noses almost brushing. Sam was just so tired. He could feel the weight of what had happened. He knew he wouldn’t get any sleep tonight. All those things that lurked around the corner had so much more power over him. He’d lost sense of reality at the bar. He hadn’t had the presence of mind to actually keep an eye on the waitress. He’d been so nervous at first, so convinced something would go wrong, but hadn’t used any of his skills to prevent anything.

 

“Hey.” Dean put a finger under Sam’s chin and lifted his head until their eyes met. “Stop it.”

 

Sam couldn’t help but smile wearily at Dean. “I can’t,” he said.

 

“Yes you can,” Dean murmured. “Starting now, okay?”

 

Sam shook his head. “What’s gonna be next, Dean?” he asked. His throat tightened. “What’s next?”

 

“Whatever it is, we’ll manage it.” Dean’s brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed in intense conviction. “You and me, Sammy. Always. You know that. Just get some sleep, okay? You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

 

Sam could tell he wasn’t invited to contest that. Dean made himself busy, humming under his breath, pulling the comforter back up over Sam’s shoulders, helping Sam lay back, fluffing his pillow. 

 

Sam lay there in silence, staring at nothing, lost in thought as Dean checked his wounds. Dean redressed his hand wounds, put cold compresses on his knees, and helped Sam swallow back some pain medicine. 

 

Dean left after that. Sam folded his hands on his stomach and looked at the ceiling. Dean had turned off the lamp when he left and now Sam was in the dark. He couldn’t check his watch. He still didn’t know what time it was. When was the last time he’d known? How much time had passed since the bar incident? Hours? Days?

 

That train of thought was going nowhere productive, only making Sam’s fingers twitch restlessly, nails picking at the edge of the band-aid adhesives. 

 

He was Sam Winchester, he didn’t know what time it was, and he wasn’t alright.

 

***

 

Sam woke from an inky-black nothingness dream to being jostled. It was still dark. Dean was getting into bed beside him, trying to get comfortable. Dean wriggled into Sam’s space, letting Sam stay on his back but draping an arm across Sam’s middle. 

 

Sam didn’t want to go back to sleep, but the shadows in the corner of the room were no less welcoming than the shadows of his nightmare.

 

“Sammy,” Dean sighed in his sleep, nose nuzzling Sam’s shoulder, and Sam closed his eyes. He laid a hand over Dean’s, and asked his body to let him sleep.

 

After hours spent laying there, listening to Dean make soft noises as he slept, the morning sun leaching blue light into the corners of the room, Sam slept. He didn’t dream.

 

***

 

Sam woke to a body that felt even more battered than last night. His headache had lessened slightly, but the pain in his various joints made him feel several decades older than his body. His mind was already far beyond that score.

 

He sat up, grunting in pain and tiredness as he stretched a stiff body. He pawed at the back of his head, feeling a small egg there. He winced, dropping his hand to his lap.

 

He looked over to Dean and found Dean curled up and hugging his pillow, but awake, staring up at Sam.

 

Sam answered the unasked question. “I’m okay,” he said. At Dean’s look, he added, “just achey.”

 

Dean sat up, stretching and yawning. He felt the back of Sam’s head, then his forehead. Apparently satisfied, he got up, ambling around the bed to Sam’s side and holding out a hand. 

 

Sam took Dean’s hand and hauled himself to his feet. He was lightheaded at first, vision greyed out due to bloodrush, but after leaning on Dean for several beats, he felt pretty human. Not all the way there--still parts rusted tin-man--but human. 

 

They got ready for the day in silence. 

 

Downstairs, Bobby served them pancakes with a grim face. Sam looked to Bobby, who dug into the pancakes as if they were the most interesting thing in the world. So Bobby knew, then. Just like before, Sam wondered how much he knew.

 

After fiddling about uselessly at the sink while the boys ate, Bobby returned to his seat across from them, holding a glass of orange juice as an excuse. “You know,” Bobby cleared his throat, “I ain’t just bein’ nice when I say you’re welcome here as long as you like.”

 

Sam sagged and opened his mouth, but Bobby held a hand up before he could form his retort. “I’m not sayin’ you’re not pains in the ass, the both of you,” Bobby continued, giving them stern looks, “but you’re family. Dean told me that you two were done hunting, Sam. That’s fine. That’s more than fine. That’s a goddamn relief. No one ever makes it out of this life.”

 

Bobby’s lips pursed, and he took his hat off and stared down at it, playing with loose stitches. His eyes flicked back up to them. “You grew up in this life. It’s gonna take a hell of a long time to adjust to anything different. You can figure it out here for as long as you like. 

 

“I would die happy with you boys by my side.”

 

He gave them another fatherly look, clearing his throat and putting his hat back on, taking several beats to adjust it. He avoided their twin puppy dog looks, downing the rest of his orange juice and standing up, dusting off the seat of his pants. 

 

“Bobby,” Sam rasped. “Thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say.

 

Bobby looked down at him and shook his head, eyes soft. “Don’t thank me, kid,” he said. “Just look after each other.”

 

“Always,” Dean spoke up. Sam looked over at Dean and Dean met his gaze. The look of fierce commitment on his face was enough to make Sam’s throat feel thick. 

 

“Now that that’s established, someone’s gotta take Copernicus to the vet,” Bobby said, changing the subject with a clap of his hands and a quick smile. “And, if I remember correctly, you two owe me one or two or thirty.”

 

Sam shook his head, letting out a little laugh. “Sure thing, Bobby,” he said.

 

Bobby nodded at them. He squeezed Sam’s shoulder. He put his orange juice in the sink. He lingered in the kitchen, looking between them as if he had more to say. His lips curled up into a wry smile and he shook his head, deciding against it. Bobby went back out into the yard, leaving Sam and Dean sitting there with their cold pancakes in silence.

 

After a beat, they both got up, mechanically cleaning the kitchen. Sam simultaneously felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders and another one had been placed there. Bobby had assuaged some of his fears, coming to them when they needed it the most, but there were still lingering questions, and even bigger fears.

 

Sam had always known it, but now, he was frank in admitting it to himself: he wasn’t alright, and he probably would remain that way for the rest of his life. The things he went through--and remembered a little more of every day, presumably also for the rest of his life--weren’t things that were gotten over easily. 

 

His eyes went distant as he washed plates and handed them to Dean for drying, the repetitive process happening automatically as he wandered deeper into his thoughts. There was a part of him that clung to the past, that immediately disagreed, saying how Dean had managed okay after Hell, was doing okay now. They’d bottled things up in the past and barreled onward, and their disregard for personal issues had saved numerous civilians. 

 

But it hadn’t saved themselves. It had done the opposite, actually, another part of his brain piped up. If they’d learned how to communicate before the entire world went into the shitter, they could have solved a lot of their problems. 

 

It wasn’t worth thinking about. He couldn’t dwell. That was another important and learned-too-late lesson. He wasn’t going to fix anything at all if he just worried about it. He’d acted when she’d wanted to live again. He’d made himself remember, and she’d blossomed for it. He was here now because of it, but god damn it, so was she. Sam couldn’t remember the last time his fluidity had felt so at home inside him.

 

Dean put the last plate into the cabinets and Sam blinked, coming back to himself. No dwelling, he reminded himself, just act.


	17. Chapter 17

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

They started on their long laundry list of chores, only speaking to each other when needed. Copper’s trip to the vet went off without a hitch. She was healthy, and loved sticking her head out of the Impala’s windows. Dean had grumbled about letting her in, but after being met with Sam and Copper’s twin puppy eyes, he couldn’t refuse.

 

They had arrived back home and gotten started on some more chores for Bobby before Dean broke the silence. “So,” he said, flipping through folders and handing Sam old Auto Shop papers to shred. “You doing any better?”

 

“Yeah,” Sam said, and he thought he meant it. “I’m still… working through some stuff.” He blushed. “Er, obviously. But. Bobby’s right. We don’t need to figure it all out at once.”

 

“We don’t,” Dean hummed in approval. “Very responsible thinking.”

 

Sam scoffed. “Hand me that.”

 

Dean handed Sam the document he’d been folding into a sailboat. Sam unfolded it and put it through the shredder. He sighed, shifting to relieve his knees of some of his weight. “If I’m ever not--” Dean looked over at him and Sam felt suddenly, ridiculously cowed. “If things ever get bad again,” he amended. “You’ll look out for me?”

 

Dean handed him another paper with a sober expression. “No matter what, Sammy.”

 

“Okay.” Sam let out a breath. “Well, we should be prepared for that. I’m--i-it’s gonna happen again.”

 

Dean sighed too, leaning back against the filing cabinet. “You’re probably right,” he said. 

 

He’d expected Dean to rebuke it, even wanted him to, and Dean’s defeated admission tugged at something in his chest. He pushed past it. “If I’m gonna be like this, we should learn how to manage it,” Sam said.

 

“Manage it,” Dean echoed bitterly. “Sure.”

 

“Hey.” Sam stood up and faced Dean. “There’s gotta be a way.” He was practically begging Dean to validate his thoughts.

 

Dean melted. “Sometimes it just feels like--” he cut himself off. “You’re right. Can we just--get this wrapped up?” He gestured at the mess of papers surrounding them like a businessman had exploded in their midst.

 

Wordlessly, Sam held his hand out, and Dean handed him another paper. Dean went back to looking for the next outdated invoice, and Sam put them through the shredder, rubbing absentmindedly at the band-aids on his knuckles. 

 

***

 

Sam stared up at Dean, nibbling worriedly at his lip. Dean was perched atop the very top step of a ladder, boot covering the warning telling him to avoid doing exactly that. The ladder was leaning against the side of Bobby’s house, and Dean was down to his elbow in Bobby’s wobbly old gutters, clearing out leaves and stick and years-old gunk. 

 

Sam was below with a bag for composting. They’d drag it all out back when they were done. 

 

Sam had to admit that Bobby had worked out quite the system. He had the two of them doing not just the usual dirty work, but irritating chores that had piled up over the years. Sam suspected Bobby would soon have them heading over to Home Depot, picking up a couple gallons of paint, and repainting the whole house. If he didn’t have them replace the siding first. Sam had learned that Dean’s work of choice during the limited time he spent with Lisa was construction work, so he was more than capable of patching up Bobby’s ramshackle home.

 

Sam just hoped Dean wouldn’t injure himself.

 

Something about the work made him feel like a kid again, and not just because some awkward teenage girl memories had hit him when he’d used the bathroom earlier. The tedious work just made time slow down, made things simpler. Gave him time to think.

 

He was exhausted. And he still hurt, pretty much everywhere. Dean was throwing himself into their work, hardly even grimacing when his bare forearm brushed against some brown sticky mystery substance clinging to the eaves of the house. 

 

Sam couldn’t blame him. Their night at the bar followed him everywhere he went, glued him to his body, memories inescapable, aches and pains unavoidable. Advil did practically nothing for him anymore, and he wasn’t about to dig out the opiates. 

 

As tiring and tedious as the dirty work was, Sam liked it. He had the easier jobs, sure, he was injured. But he’d always been someone who liked to work, liked to push himself and feel productive. Only recently had runs become enjoyable again. He wasn’t going to let one terrible night draw him away from that. 

 

Dean called his name. Sam grabbed the composting bin and climbed halfway up the ladder. He wrinkled his nose when a bowling ball of condensed leaves and mud thumped into it, sending musty air directly into his nose. 

 

“Dean,” Sam said as Dean turned around to get back to work.

 

“Yeah, I know,” Dean said. “I’m almost done with this section. We’ll move the ladder in a minute.”

 

“Not what I was going to say.” Sam smiled slightly. He hesitated. “I just--when it happens again, don’t shy away.”

 

Dean was looking back at him now, lips pursed like he didn’t like what Sam was saying. He didn’t say anything, just listened.

 

“You won’t make it worse, you won’t bring anything else back, by touching me,” Sam said, locking eyes with Dean, keeping his voice firm with conviction. “You’ll just help me remember. So… touch me.”

 

Dean’s face was serious for several beats before he broke into a specific Dean-smile that only spelled trouble. “Oh, honey,” Dean jeered. “I don’t have trouble touchin’ you.”

 

Sam made a little scoff noise, shaking his head and looking at the ground. “Just keep it in mind, will you?” He looked back up at Dean.

 

Dean nodded. He turned back to the gutter and started scraping at something. “I will,” he promised, sounding slightly subdued.

 

Sam’s shoulders loosened. He let out a breath. Next time, it would be better.

 

***

 

They piled into the shower together around sunset, sweaty and dirty and muddy, sighing in unison as the hot spray hit their backs. Sam leaned against Dean, energy leaching out of him. He leaned his forehead against the shower tiles and Dean worked kinks out of his back with his capable hands.

 

After his dick got interested, Dean worked stress out of his cock, too. Sam was gasping, hips bucking as Dean wrung pleasure out of him. Sam repaid the favor, turning Dean into a twitching, swearing, growling mess. 

 

They washed dirt and spunk and sweat from each other’s bodies. Sam paid careful attention during his ministrations, saving specific freckle and scar locations to memory as he scrubbed Dean’s pecs. If he ever doubted reality--if he ever didn’t know the hands coming around him--at least he would have some cues to draw him back to himself. 

 

Dean washed Sam with warm palms and a tenderness that had him choked up, grateful he was turned away from Dean for most of it, and that showers rinsed away tears that might have fallen. Dean got dirt out from under Sam’s nails and rinsed his scars. 

 

Dean washed Sam’s hair, massaging his scalp and rubbing the soap behind his ears. Sam closed his eyes, sighing into the feeling. He let his guard crumble, just leaning there, feeling warm as Dean cleaned him up.

 

Dean toweled him off, too, even though Sam protested. Dean was in full mother hen mode, and Sam couldn’t find it in himself to stop him. He got into boxers and a t-shirt on his own, and by the time they were both pink-skinned, warm, and clean, he couldn’t wait to crawl into bed and snuggle into Dean’s waiting arms.

 

She rested her head on his chest, yawning, eyes closed. She was close to falling asleep when Dean spoke up. 

 

“If you have a nightmare-” Dean cut himself off. “Usually I can get you out of it, but if I can’t…”

 

“I don’t know,” Sam answered, running her hand up and down Dean’s side. “Just hold me.”

 

Drifting, she felt more than heard Dean’s chuckle. “Is that a current request, in general, or a suggestion if something happens?”

 

“Hmm,” she sighed, burying her nose in Dean’s shirt. “All’a the above,” she slurred, voice muffled by Dean’s chest.

 

“Okay, sweetheart,” he whispered, drawing his arms up around her, and fulfilling his promise.


	18. Chapter 18

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

Sam panted, adjusting her armband. She was halfway through her fifth lap through the junkyard, and her calves were burning. She hoped listening to some fairly aggressive hair rock would motivate her, keep her going, but even the most seductive of saxophones couldn’t alleviate her growing headache.

 

She fiddled with an earbud, weaving past a discarded pickup with its bed sticking out into the path. She checked the time on her watch. Dean would be done with a customer soon. A woman down the street had come in wanting a new bumper and Bobby had forwarded her to Dean. 

 

Sam took a break, doing a walking lap to cool herself down. She reached the old Previa, near the dead center of the maze, and she sat in the open door, listening to her heart pound.

 

She paused the music, taking out her earbuds. She looked around the junkyard, squinting up at the rusted skyscrapers. A metal tinkling caught her attention, and she was on alert until she realized what the noise was. The frequency of tinks and bonks increased, and she held her hand out. Fat raindrops hit her palm. She waved her hand, drying it off. She got up, putting her music player into her jacket pocket for safekeeping. The rain started in earnest as she walked away from the Previa, the heavens opening up.

 

She’d continue this later. She was a little grateful, legs colt-wobby as she started the trek back to the backyard. She wondered if Dean was done with the customer yet, or if she’d walk in on the woman aggressively flirting with Dean and Dean responding with mild flirting to ensure a repeat customer and a nice tip. 

 

She shivered. It was pouring, now, and a quiet, distant peal of thunder warned of a coming storm. 

 

She walked mindlessly, legs moving on autopilot, taking a worn route back to Bobby’s yard. She hummed quietly to herself. She turned a corner, stopping short when a city block of towers of squashed cars rose up before her where she’d sworn the path led to Bobby’s driveway.

 

She took a step back, looking up at the cars, blinking against the raindrops that fell onto her face. They were old. They looked as if they’d been there for years. Weeds grew into the hubcaps of the lower cars, a skinny, youthful oak tree poking out of the empty windshield of a car a few years up, branches reaching toward the sky.

 

Sam frowned, shaking her head at herself. She must’ve gotten distracted and taken a wrong turn. She turned around, heading back the way she came. When things became familiar again--Sam breathing a sigh of relief at a landmark sixties Mustang--she retraced her steps, this time opting for a different path.

 

Lightning, then thunder, much closer together this time. The wind picked up and Sam wrapped her arms around her torso. It was getting darker by the minute, fat clouds blocking out the sun. She was looking forward to curling up with Copper and a warm mug of cocoa. 

 

She turned a corner, and was met with another dead end. Cars stretched on in all directions. She could see Bobby’s house from here. She could squeeze between cars and get there in a few minutes. She’d get scratched up, probably, sharp rusted bumpers and poison ivy both hazards, but at least she wouldn’t question her sanity while doing it.

 

She tried not to let the uneasiness simmering in her stomach spread through her limbs. She was just tired. She’d had moments like this a million times before, staying up way too late researching something and seeing things. Especially now it wasn’t unusual. 

 

Another roll of thunder. Sam shivered. Her jacket was sticking to her body, making her cold all over. She pushed a honeysuckle bush out of the way and weaseled between an old Caprice and a Bel Air. 

 

A cold laugh emanated from behind her shoulder. It was a brief sound but familiar enough to lock up her muscles. She swallowed and spun around, leaning down and whipping a switchblade out of her sock in one fluid moment. 

 

The path was empty. The shadows inside the corpses of old vehicles seemed nefarious. She squinted at them, but it was too dark to see properly. She turned around, white-knuckling her switchblade, keen to hurry into Bobby’s house and fix herself up.

 

She stopped short. Bobby’s house wasn’t there. Where it had stood before, where she’d sworn it had stood, was just grass, a small hill, as if it had never been built.

 

Sam chewed on her lip, finally allowing herself to feel the emotion that had been nipping at her ankles this whole time: fear. She was scared. She was cold and tired and paranoid and it was not a fun combination.

 

She turned back around after a moment of indecision. She could follow the path out somewhere and trust her senses from there. If she went off the beaten path, it’d be too easy to lose her way, in her condition. Without the regular markers (without Bobby’s fucking house), the junk yard had turned into a giant obstacle course to overcome.

 

When Sam turned back to the path, it was unrecognizable. For endless leagues, cars stretched off in every direction. She was in a maze of unknown proportion.

 

“Not real,” she muttered to herself, teeth clattering. She rubbed her hands together to keep them warm. They were turning white. Unable to stand still, to consider what any of this meant, she chose a path at random.

 

She turned, turned, turned again. She picked a branch left, then right, keeping track of a mental map. She was doing loops, crossing over places she’d been before, but nothing was familiar. It didn’t even feel like she was making any progress. 

 

Another laugh, this time much closer. She whirled around. She caught the edges of a dark shape moving inhumanly fast at the edge of her periphery vision. She tried to follow where it had gone with her eyes, but there was nothing. 

 

She froze, panting. She listened to the thunder and the pitter-patter of rain on car hoods. She worried at the polished grip of her blade with her fingers. It was getting slippery with rain and palm sweat.

 

She walked again. Something icy touched her side. She turned just in time to see a pair of narrowed eyes disappear into the wind. A flash of lightning, a shape, gone the next moment. She flinched, heart beating right through her chest.

 

Sam started running. Almost immediately there was another flash of lightning. She felt as if she’d been blinded, vision going sideways, brightness mixing with blackness.

 

Something was chasing her. 

 

Sam ran faster.

 

That damn laugh again. 

 

“You think you can run from me?” he hissed. “Honey, you tried that for years. How long will it take you to give up this time? Hmm?”

 

Sam’s blood went cold. She pushed herself harder, slipping in the mud. She grunted as she sprinted through the maze of cars. She was soaked now, frequently wiping rain out of her eyes. Her limbs were icy blocks, each gasping breath colder in her core and harder to draw. 

 

She turned a corner and he was just leaning against a car, looking up at her from under his eyelashes like some fucking pantomime of innocence. She was going fast enough that she fell on her ass when she tried to stop. He walked over to her, looking down at her and smirking. She hated seeing her face on him. It wasn’t his to use.

 

“Fun commercial break, but I got bored,” he said, inspecting his nail beds. “Although it is amusing to see how easily you fall into incest. I think this one’s a record.”

 

“Shut up,” Sam growled, pushing herself up. She wiped her muddied palms on the seat of her pants. The skin there burned, tiny pieces of gravel digging into the creases between her fingers. She turned and started to run again, only to run directly into him, his freezing cold arms coming up around her like chains, unbreakable.

 

She struggled but it did nothing. He watched her, content to wait.

 

“Oh, Sammy,” he cooed. “Don’t you remember? We’ve played this game before. How many times have you been ‘saved’ from hell?”

 

“No,” Sam choked out, unable to stop herself. 

 

“There was that time you and Dean shacked up in Rufus’ cabin, that was steamy,” Lucifer said. “Or when you were in that mental institution and Dean watched after you. A little too heroic, if you ask me. I’m not gonna clean you up when you piss yourself.”

 

Sam swung her arm out, slicing through his throat with her switchblade. Lucifer gasped, holding his throat. When he took his hands away, there was no wound. He gestured at her. “Run,” he said. “I’ll give you a head start this time.”

 

Sam turned and ran. Her legs were screaming at her, her lungs burning. She pushed herself as hard as she could. She flew down one path, following her gut instincts. Around another bend, and thank god. Thank fucking god. Bobby’s house. It wasn’t real. He wasn’t real. She started to stumble, legs going colt-wobbly. She just had to make it a little farther.

 

A blinding flash of lightning and a rumble of thunder sharp and loud enough to rattle the ground beneath her. She blinked away the afterimage of the lightning, and Bobby’s house was gone again.

 

Sam bit back a cry, eyes burning in frustration. 

 

“Sammy…” Lucifer sing-songed somewhere behind her. Sam ran again, but she couldn’t keep it up. She stumbled again, slipping in the mud. Just a little further.

 

She turned a corner to face a dead end. Her legs went weak and she stumbled forward, falling into a heap against a busted up VW van. She panted, rasping and choking. It felt like her lungs were locking up. She looked down at her bloodied, muddied, trembling hands. She rested her head against the cool metal of the car, closing her eyes and letting the rain wash over her face.

 

“Not real,” she hoarsely whispered, but she was starting to have her doubts. Everything he said to her… it made a sickening kind of sense. And after what she’d been through, what she remembered, it didn’t surprise her. Her life had been stolen from her time and time again. She’d been stupid to think this time was any different.

 

A cold hand curled around her jaw, jerking her head up. Lucifer smiled down at her, snakelike canines showing. His face warped into cruel mockery, and he laughed at her. “Look at you,” he said. He giggled. His spittle hit her face. He pushed her shoulder. “Go. Run again. Look, there’s Bobby’s! You’re so close!”

 

She closed her eyes. He let go of her jaw and she let her head fall limply to the side. She swallowed. Her body was one big ache. She was so tired. She was so cold. She’d always been cold. He was colder than anyone, the cage the place the furthest from any warmth left in the universe.

 

“Sammy.” Lucifer shook her shoulder.

 

“No,” she managed, eyes screwing up tighter. A tear fell. God. She felt useless, weak. There was no sense in fighting. She didn’t want to get turned inside out again, would do anything to avoid it, but it was out of her hands. 

 

“Sammy,” he said again, but his voice was off.

 

Sam didn’t move. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of running. He said her voice again, and she refused to acknowledge it, to respond to him. 

 

Warm hands roved her face, her jaw, her neck, her clavicle. Something was draped across her lap. Her hair was moved behind her ear. 

 

“Sammy,” Dean said, and Sam cracked her eyes open.

 

A red-faced, red-eyed, rattled older brother was staring down at her. He was holding her hands, rubbing them, more like, drawing warmth back into them. His eyes were wide and he shuffled closer when their eyes met. “Sammy?”

 

Sam swallowed down iron. “Dean?” she asked, her voice rough.

 

Dean nodded, giving her a tremulous smile. “The one and only,” he said. “You had an attack.”

 

Sam laughed. Dean frowned. He got an arm behind her back and tried to help her sit up. She went ragdoll in his arms, and he pulled away. “What time is it,” she asked, voice flat.

 

Dean blinked. He looked down at his watch. “Four forty-eight, November sixteenth, twenty-seventeen,” he said. “Your name is Sam Winchester, you’re my little sister, and you’ve been askin’ me for the date since November second. Two weeks ago.”

 

“Two weeks,” Sam echoed, laughing, feeling light-headed. 

 

“Trust me, I know,” Dean said. “Sammy, come on. You’re gonna catch something. We gotta get you inside.”

 

Dean didn’t wait for a response. He leaned forward and hauled her upright. She went weak for a second, and Dean reached for her, steadying her. He wove an arm around her waist and she leaned on him. He was probably taking more of her weight than she was. Her vision was blurry. She stared dully at the puddles in the gravel as they walked. 

 

Time went vague. She focused on the ground, on her breathing, giving her brain a rest. The gravel turned to worn wooden steps, then a welcome mat with the word “welcome” completely worn away, then Bobby’s front hall.

 

She lost some time after that. When she came to, she was sitting on the toilet seat, and Dean was using tweezers to pick gravel out of her hands. It felt like her hands were vibrating and burning.

 

Dean did that for a long time. They were both quiet throughout it all. When he was satisfied, he rinsed her hands, then cleaned them with alcohol. She hissed, instinctively pulling her hands away, but Dean held them steady. The burn didn’t actually bother her that much. If anything, it grounded her. Pain was reality.

 

Dean helped her strip out of her soaked, muddied clothing. The tub was already drawn, and Dean was at her side as she lowered herself into it, sighing as the warm water hit her aching legs. 

 

Outside, thunder rumbled, and she flinched. Dean put a hand on her arm. “Just the storm,” he murmured, eyeing her with concern. 

 

She nodded, leaning back with arthritic slowness. Dean grabbed a sponge from the cabinet and squeezed soap onto it, scrubbing her down, one limb at a time with a practiced familiarity. 

 

She closed her eyes, focusing on the sensations. She didn’t want to drift again, didn’t want to give into her poison thoughts. She channeled all of her remaining energy into the feeling of the warm sponge moving across her shoulders, swiping at her armpits, at her ribs.

 

“Tilt yer head back,” Dean whispered. Sam complied. A beat later, warm water was poured over her head. She heard the snick of the shampoo bottle cap, and Dean’s hands came up to her head, massaging her scalp. She sighed, going loose, aching muscles twinging. Dean rubbed the shampoo into her hair, getting behind her ears and running fingers through her hair.

 

“Eyes closed,” Dean said. Sam hadn’t realized she’d opened them. She closed her eyes and Dean poured water over her head a few more times, using his hands to brush hair off of her cheek, swiping soap suds off her shoulders.

 

Dean drained the tub. Sam wished she could have stayed in it forever. He helped her stand, wrapping her in a fluffy towel. He toweled off her hair. He brushed out the knots. He took her hands--which were now bandaged on her palms as well as her knuckles--and led her into their room. 


	19. Chapter 19

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was still storming outside the window, but the lightning flashes were dim, the thunder weak and intermittent, and Sam found it didn’t bother her. Dean, humming Led Zeppelin, got her out of her towel and into sweats and a t-shirt. He tried to push her into bed but she refused.

 

She stayed still, pushing back against his persistent yet gentle tugging. She didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to hear Lucifer’s voice anymore. She knew Dean must be concerned and felt a little guilty.

 

Dean rubbed at her back. “You need rest,” he said.

 

Sam shook her head. She took a breath and psyched herself up. “Can we--” she swallowed past a sudden influx of tears. “Can we look in the box again?” her voice was rough.

 

A beat. “Sure,” Dean said. He pulled the shoebox of memories out of its hiding place under the floorboards. He set it down in the middle of the floor and helped Sam sit. She leaned back against one of the beds. Dean sat beside her, keeping a hand on her somewhere at all times--the small of her back, her shoulders, her forearm.

 

Dean flipped open the lid. Rain hit the roof and windows. It was completely dark outside now. There was a warm lamp on in the corner of the room, and light bleeding in from under the door.

 

“Pick somethin’,” Dean said.

 

Sam peered into the box. Her hands felt like T.V. static. Her legs felt like piles of stretched-out taffy. She used the very tips of her fingers, so far undamaged, to rummage through the contents of the box. She spotted the rubber-banded pile of postcards. She tapped them with her finger. “Can you read some of these?”

 

Dean hesitated. He gave her a look. “Sure,” he said. He carefully prised them out from under several army men. He tugged the rubber bands off of them with a sharp snap. He shuffled them like a hand of cards, showing her the pictures on the back of them--’50s style motels, national parks, strange tourist attractions. “Pick a card, any card.”

 

Sam deliberated. She chose a card with a picture of a canal.

 

Dean took a breath and pulled it out. He re-stacked the other cards and set them aside. He flipped it over. Sam scanned Dean’s chicken scrawl without reading any of it.

 

Dean gave her another look. His jaw was ticking, one of his knees bouncing. She reached blindly for his hand, found it, and took it in her own. “S’okay,” she whispered, shooting him a tired smile. Dean smiled back.

 

He turned back to the postcard and cleared his throat.

 

“Dear Sammy, it’s been exactly a year since you left. You’re probably done with a year of college already. How does it feel? You got a 4.0? Have you even spoken to a girl yet? I can just see you sitting in some dorm room already started on a summer reading list or something. Geek boy. I guess a geek man now, huh? Ignore that. Stupid joke.

 

“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but Dad checks up on you every once in a while. I asked him how you were and he said you were taller. When you left you were almost as tall as me. I wonder if you’re taller than me. Are you still growing your hair out? Do you have peach fuzz? I bet you’ve grown so much. Being a late bloomer is a bitch, huh?

 

“I’m at Soo Locks. You would have liked the tour. Lots of history shit I don’t really remember. This is where ships come in from Canada to Michigan. They’ve got these bigass bridges and you can watch the water fill up in the canals when a boat comes in. Dad and I are hunting a black dog. Nasty bitches. Chomped a body count in a pretty upscale neighborhood.

 

“I think it might just be ‘cause of the date, but I can’t stop thinking of you. You’re so good at anything you do. Dad said you declared pre-law. You gonna be a lawyer, Sammy? You think you can get me and Dad out of a few tight spots? If you have time between driving your fancy car and yachting or whatever. Nevermind. Ignore me. I’m being weird.

 

“Just one more thing. Have you figured it out yet? Should I--should I be calling you something else? You left your skirt here. I don’t know what it means. I threw it out so Dad wouldn’t see. I miss you. He misses you. He won’t say it. I don’t know, Sammy. I don’t know anything. I just hope you’re happy. That’s all. Dean.”

 

They sat in silence. Sam ran the words through her head. She could see Dean, so many years younger (almost twenty, jesus), sitting alone in a motel room after getting the postcard at a tourist shop, penning that letter. She could imagine how he felt, how far away she must have seemed, in a way that was far beyond just geographical.

 

“Were you happy?” Dean asked softly, breaking the silence.

 

“Yes,” she said. “And No. I needed you. But I could never--I could never do that again. Be that person.”

 

“Would you want to?” A beat. Dean looked so vulnerable that Sam couldn’t breathe. “With me?”

 

“I--” Sam stopped herself. “I don’t know.”

 

Dean placed the card on top of the others, pushing a corner in line with the others when it was slightly lopsided. He played with the rubber bands, looping them around his fingers and stretching them to their limit.

 

“I can’t ever be that,” Sam said. Dean lowered his hands. “I don’t want to, I don’t want a--a degree and a nice house, but I just. I’ll never be that. I’ll never be anything like that. There’s no chance.”

 

“Sammy-”

 

Sam laughed, and it came out as a half sob. Dean’s face melted, his brows knitting in empathy and concern. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said through tears, cheeks burning. She smiled at him helplessly. “Sorry.”

 

He wrapped her in his arms, patting her back. She pressed her face into his shoulder. “Hey. Shhhh.” Dean rubbed her back, rocking her so slightly that she wasn’t certain he was aware he was doing it. “S’okay. I get it, Sammy. Just let it out.”

 

She did. She cried into his shoulder, drawing her arms around his shoulders and holding him as tight as she could.

 

They sat there, half-sprawled into each other’s laps, holding onto each other as if the other would disappear if they let go, unconcerned for the outside world, ignorant of the fading storm outside. Her energy left her, and she leaned on Dean, sinking into his arms and thinking of a thousand different Sams who never were, who never found their way.

 

She hadn’t found her way, either, and probably never would, but she had this. She had Dean. She felt his tears hot on her shoulder and revised: they had each other.

 

She shook the devil off her back. If there was one thing he couldn’t touch, it was her faith.

 

Her faith in Dean.

 

***

 

It snowed, turning the mud puddles into slippery ice and slush. It wasn’t cold enough to stick, but the flakes fell fat and slow, and Sam contented herself with tracking their journey from the sky to the earth.

 

She sat at the desk in the corner of their room, looking out the window. Before her was a pad of paper and a pen, but she hadn’t written anything yet. Each time she tried, something held her back.

 

She couldn’t decide what to say. Putting it down on paper made it feel so… formal. And permanent. The stakes were laughably low, and yet her hand stayed every time she tried to bite the bullet and write the first word.

 

She was doing okay. She hadn’t had any nightmares and had woken up in Dean’s arms. Bobby made them breakfast and they all went on a walk with Copper. It was nice, even though they were all silent, brooding over various aches and pains.

 

Dean was busy. He’d told her what he was doing and where he was going but she had been too distracted to commit the information to memory. Whatever it was, she was sure it was some sort of physical labor. She hoped he was wearing his coat. And boots with good treads.

 

She wasn’t too worried about him. She knew Dean worked his problems out with his hands. Some separation would be good, too; Sam wasn’t feeling the loss too keenly. She could still feel him nearby. She’d always had an inexplicable sixth “Dean” sense, and no alarms were ringing.

 

She turned back to the lined piece of paper before her. It had no right to be so empty, to goad her the way it was.

 

She clicked the pen and set to work.

 

Her “Dear Dean,” looked like the work of a third grader. She stared at her pen, tongue between her teeth. She hadn’t actually written anything in--in god knows how long. It was a strange concept.

 

A wrong she would right, diligently, every month, just as Dean had all those years ago. More than a decade ago. Sam shook her head. She was still distracting herself. She didn’t want to think about that any longer.

 

She wrote the date at the top of the paper. November seventeeth, twenty seventeen. She wrote her name next to it. Sam Winchester. She scribbed it out and just wrote Sammy.

 

Dear Dean. She tapped the pen against her bottom lip.

 

“I bet you’re wondering when the hell I got to writing this and why. I wanted to give you postcards, but Bobby doesn’t exactly have a bucketful of them lying around. This is okay, right? I could draw you something but we both know how that would end.”

 

Sam shook her head at herself.

 

“I just wanted to be able to say that I love you. I really do. I always have. And I know I’m not easy to be around, especially right now. I’m only upright because of you, I hope you know that. You saved me. You save me every day. I don’t know how you do it.

 

“I know we wanted something for ourselves. We wanted to get out of the life, to have a happy ending. Then we revised to something doable, you know, you being a mechanic and me doing some easy job that would distract me just enough to keep me occupied but not stressful enough to trigger me. But I think we both know that even that is beyond us. Well, it’s beyond me, and you wouldn’t do anything without me, so.

 

“So. I’m not okay. I probably never will be. But I know who I am now. And I’m not happy, but I know what that feels like now. I don’t have to pretend. And I know I probably should be, but I’m not scared. We’re kind of screwed, and we’re screwed up, but we’re screwed up together.

 

“I’m ready to do anything with you. I’ll follow you anywhere. I’ll try anything, and I promise to do my best. I know I said I’m not okay and won’t ever will be, but I’ll try, Dean. I’ll try my hardest to be okay for you. Don’t feel like you have to carry me all the time. Don’t feel like you’re alone. I’m here for you, too. When you’re scared. When things suck. I love you. Sammy.”

 

It took her several drafts to end up with that letter, entire paragraphs scratched out, sheets ripped up and thrown away. The final draft she had was rife with wobbly writing and scratched out misspellings, but it was done. It existed. On paper.

 

Sam folded the letter into thirds and wrote Dean’s name on the outside. She dragged the desk away from the wall and retrieved the box. She set the letter right on top, smoothing down the edges. She stared at it, nodding to herself. She could do this. She could at least do this.

 

She closed the box and put it away. She felt lighter, a weight off her chest. She put away the pen and paper.

 

She went to the window. It was snowing with less gusto, the sky an even grey, the last of the leaves gone from the trees. In the yard, Dean was raking them up. He had a pretty decent pile going already. Sam watched Dean’s jacket pull across his shoulders as he worked. Dean took a break, leaning on the rake. He looked up at the window.

 

Their eyes met. Sam waved at him. Dean waved back. Dean turned and got back to work, and Sam left the window. She headed down the hallway and down the stairs. In the study, Copper was sitting on the couch with her head on her paws. When she spotted Sam, she lifted her head, ears perking up. Copper hopped off the couch, following after Sam, tail wagging. Sam pet her, her fluffy coat damp against his palm. She wondered if Dean had taken her on a walk.

 

Sam put her coat and boots on, and headed out the back door. She got a rake from Bobby’s shed and walked around to the side of the house where Dean was working, Copper on her heels.

 

Sam got to work. She and Dean raked in silence, Copper flopping in the dead grass beside them, showing her belly, tail still wagging. The world was quiet and cold, the only noises coming from the crackle of leaves and drag of the rake and Copper panting.

 

It took them a little over an hour to rake Bobby’s yard. It was larger than it looked. They had several piles of leaves, and if Sam were in any better condition, she would have pushed Dean into one of them and followed him down.

 

They put the rakes away. Dean made for the back door but Sam grabbed his wrist at the last moment. He looked at where their bodies met and then up at her face. “You good?” he asked.

 

“Yeah, I just thought we could. Uh. Talk,” Sam explained. “Wanna go for a drive?”

 

Dean shrugged, nodding, and shook himself out of her grip. “Meet me out front in five.”

 

Not long later, they were cruising down a country road, poppyseed-sized snowflakes turning to droplets of water on the dashboard window. Dean had the radio on low, driving one-handed, his other arm slung across the back of the bench seat. His fingers brushed against Sam’s neck, playing with her curls.

 

Dean got onto the highway. Sam leaned back in her seat, watching the world slip by like a slideshow. The road ahead was flat and straight, forests and farms scrolling past on either side. They drove until they reached a rest stop, a pause between small towns on a long stretch of lonely highway.

 

They got out in the parking lot. Dean went around to the trunk and pulled out a blanket. They walked past the little shack that housed bathrooms and vending machines and found a gentle slope dotted with picnic tables and benches.

 

They sat pressed up against one another on a secluded bench shielded from the rest of the rest stop property by short and stout pine trees. Dean unfolded the blanket, and draped it across both of their shoulders. He pulled out a flask, offering Sam a sip. An old tradition. She shook her head. He shrugged and tilted his head back, taking a swig.

 

They sat in silence, staring at the grey forest, preparing for winter. Most of the birds had already flown south. Their breaths puffed out before them in unison.

 

“So.” Dean tapped a beat on the seat of his thighs, squinting up at the cloud cover. “What’s up?”

 

Sam stretched her legs, adjusting the blanket around her shoulders. She leaned on Dean’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she said.

 

“For what?”

 

“For finding me yesterday and pulling me out. For everything.”

 

Dean was shaking his head before she’d even finished. His arm drew more tightly across her shoulders. “You don’t have to say that.”

 

“I wanted to,” Sam pushed. She looked up at him. “That’s--that’s what a lot of our future is gonna look like.”

 

Dean looked like he wanted to argue, but his expression dimmed easily until he just looked worn. Not upset, just worn. “Probably,” he said in a tone that invited her to speak further.

 

“Are you okay with spending half your time cleaning up my messes?” Sam asked.

 

“Where’s this coming from?” Dean asked.

 

Sam sat up straighter. Dean took his arm from her shoulders. She turned to face him. “I’m not mad about it, I don’t blame myself, I just. Want to make sure you know what you’re signing up for.”

 

Dean shook his head. “I held you when you were a baby before Dad did, did you know that? Mom gave you to me. And I gave myself to you. I know what I’m signing up for.”

 

Sam thawed a few degrees, offering Dean a grateful smile. He smiled back, just as kindly. She leaned forward and they shared a closed-mouth, intimate kiss, a promise sealed.

 

When she leaned back, Dean was still looking at her like that, in a way that made her heart flutter, that made her feel like this all had to be a dream.

 

A dream. Her thoughts flashed back to yesterday, to what the devil had whispered in her ear. Dean saw the change in her face the moment it happened. He squeezed her hands. “Hey,” he said. “None of that.”

 

“I saw him,” Sam said.

 

“I know.” Dean was still holding her hand.

 

“He was chasing me. He caught me. He always does. He said… he thought it was funny I thought this was real. Asked me if I remembered playing this game before. I did.”

 

Dean’s face went shuttered, his eyes hard. “Sammy--”

 

“I didn’t want to run anymore,” Sam said with a shudder. “I didn’t run at the bar, either. I was just so scared. I wanted it to be over.”

 

Dean didn’t say anything, but she could tell it was killing him just as much as it was killing her.

 

She squeezed his hand back, leaning forward, staring at him without blinking. “Dean,” she said, stressing the syllable, “I don’t even know what the man in the bar looked like. I don’t know what the waitress wanted. I don’t know how long I spent in the junkyard, where I was running to. I don’t know the last time I spoke to Bobby. And I keep feeling like, if I can just get past it, if I can just escape it… I’ll be okay.

 

“But the next time it happens, I won’t be haunted by just one thing. It’ll be the bar and the junkyard and something else. It’ll be the fucking hose box squeezing my bones. I just. I can’t.”

 

She didn’t know what else to say. She’d lost track of her point, of where she was going, only chasing a sense of urgency, a need to convey something to Dean, to pin down reality like a butterfly in a glass box.

 

Dean was quiet. Sam looked at their laps, at the wool blanket shielding them from the cold.

 

“It scares me too,” Dean admitted in a strained murmur. “It hurts to see you in pain, Sammy, to know you’re somewhere I can’t go. Sometimes I feel like I have to watch your every step like you’re a little kid. But that isn’t doing shit for us. The bar still happened, yesterday still happened. I’m sorry.” Dean sighed. “I’m sorry hell still isn’t over for you. Not all the way.”

 

Sam swallowed past a lump in her throat. She laughed and he gave her an odd look. She shrugged, searching for the words. “I’m just glad we’re doing this.”

 

“Better late than never.” Dean smiled.

 

Sam shook her head. “I just wish it didn’t hurt.”

 

“Me too, kid.”

 

She kissed his cheek. His skin was cool against her lips. She led out a shuddery breath. “So.”

 

“So.”

 

“I guess there’s only one thing we can do,” she said. At his look, she said, “we can try.”

 

“Damn right.” Dean looked less old now, the color coming back into his cheeks. “We don’t need the picket fences, Sam.”

 

“We’ll just stress Bobby out instead,” she said.

 

“For as long as we have to,” Dean reminded her. “Never being okay doesn’t mean you can’t ever get better.”

 

They stewed around in that idea for a while, neither of them speaking. After Sam started to shiver, Dean stood up, folding up the blanket.

 

They drove back home with the heat blasting. Sam drifted, her jacket folded up against the passenger door. Dean had a soft rock station playing.

 

The rise and fall of their little boat on the ocean waves lulled her into a half-sleep, her heartbeat slow, her thoughts running in circles.


	20. Chapter 20

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

Home was a welcome change of scenery. Bobby was back, sitting in the kitchen on a stool, stitching up a gruesome gash on his forearm. Sam’s breath hitched when she saw it. She went to Bobby, ignoring Dean’s attempt at drawing her away. 

 

She watched Bobby pull the final stitch through and tie it off. “Where is this from?” she asked. “What have you been doing? How long have you been gone?”

 

Bobby head a hand up. “One question at a time,” he said. He turned away from her, unwrapping a bandage and smoothing it down across his wound. He packed up the med kit. Dean came over and took it. He left them alone under the guise of putting the med kid away.

 

“Do you remember what I told you a week and some ago?” Bobby asked.

 

Sam wracked her brain. When she came up with nothing, he elaborated. “Demon activity?”

 

A faint twinge of memory. Something Bobby had told her before she’d opened up the mental floodgates. “What about it?”

 

“I was out in Iowa for two days with some other hunters,” Bobby said. “A few demons were trying to get Lucifer out of the cage.”

 

Sam’s throat tightened. The coldness she felt must have shown on her face. Bobby was leaning forward immediately, a hand on her shoulder. “They couldn’t do it, son,” he said. “How they were able to organize without tearing each other to shreds is a mystery. We lost a few of our own. I’m lucky I just got scratched. We’re plannin’ on regrouping out that way, just to make sure the demons aren’t up to something. Hell knows what Crowley’s got cookin’.” He paused. “It’s probably nothing. I’m not saying that to reassure you, I know you don’t need that. We just have to be sure.” 

 

Sam nodded. “You’ll keep me updated.”

 

Bobby flashed her a small smile. “‘Course,” he said. He hopped off the stool, leading Sam over to the study, where Copper was sleeping. “Why don’t you update me on what you two have been up to?”

 

Sam hesitated. The first things that came to mind were not appropriate to share with a father figure. “Not much,” she said. “I’m sure Dean told you--I haven’t been having the best time. But we’re managing it.”

 

Bobby nodded, staying silent. He was looking at her, searching for honesty.

 

“We’re gonna stay for a while, if that’s okay with you,” she said. “We’re--I need some time.”

 

“You’re welcome as long as you like,” Bobby said. “You know that.”

 

“I know,” Sam didn’t know what to say. “Just wanted to let you know.”

 

“Hey.” Bobby’s voice was gruff. He pulled her into a hug, slamming into her with enough force to knock some breath from her lungs. He leaned back, keeping a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad you two are here. And I’m glad you’re workin’ through things. It’s good you have each other.”

 

Sam smiled. “Yeah,” she said quietly.

 

Bobby cleared his throat. “You have me on speed dial,” he reminded her. “Shouldn’t take more than a week to get through things in Iowa. Look after Copper for me, will you?”

 

“Promise.”

 

Bobby looked between her and Copper with open fondness. “Good,” he said. “Now, git. I’ve got a library in Hartford to dig through.”

 

“Will do,” Sam said. “Thanks, Bobby.”

 

He waved her away, packing up his things. Shaking her head, Sam climbed the steps and walked in on Dean reading her letter.

 

She stopped short. 

 

Dean looked up at her. They had a stare down until Dean lowered the letter, slowly refolding it and smoothing out a bent corner. He put it back in the box like a museum curator handled precious artifacts. Sam watched in silence, unmoving, while Dean put the box back in its hiding place.

 

He stood and faced her. “I.” He opened and closed his mouth. “I thought maybe you’d want to hear another postcard.”

 

“Did you read it all the way through?” she asked.

 

Dean nodded. He stepped forward, reaching out for her. Sam met him halfway, letting him settle his hands loosely at the small of her back. “Are there more?”

 

“There will be,” she said. 

 

“Good,” Dean said. He nodded, biting his lip. His brow scrunched, his features flickering in indecision. He looked up at her, some resolution met. “Sammy,” he said. “I love you.”

 

Sam swallowed. They’d never. That wasn’t something they said. Now, it seemed a ludicrous, and she couldn’t help but smile at him. “I love you, too,” she whispered.

 

Dean was kissing her before she knew it. She kissed back, wrapping her arms around his neck, pushing into his space, pressing their bodies flush against one another. Dean let out a rough, wounded noise, his hands coming up to frame her face, to tilt her jaw for the best access, kissing her deeply and wetly, his tongue swiping against hers.

 

Sam shivered. She lost herself in the sensations, in the taste of Dean, the feel of his rough hands roving her body. She tightened her grip around his neck, walking them backward until her legs hit the nearest bed and she went down. He followed her down, unwilling to part their lips. Sam shuffled backward and Dean finally pulled away just far enough to meet her eyes, to ask a silent question.

 

Sam’s eyes were dark. Her mouth hung open. Something passed between them. Dean crawled over to meet her, and together, they unbuttoned her shirt. Sam got it off her shoulders and tossed it away. Her undershirt was next, then Dean’s shirts. Sam wasted no time in getting to Dean’s jeans and her own sweats.

 

They kissed again, down to just boxers and panties, Dean’s body bracketed by Sam’s thighs. She could feel herself taking interest, getting harder. Dean grunted into her mouth, pressing up against her, and she could feel him. He was in the same boat.

 

Her breath hitched and she let Dean take control of the kisses, mapping secret stories in the freckles on his back. 

 

Dean broke off the kiss to nibble at her jaw. She jolted when his hands came up to her chest, fingers rubbing at her nipples. Her body arched and she hissed out a breath. Her muscles were tight with need. With fumbling hands, she reached down between them and wiggled out of her panties.

 

Dean looked down at her, taking his fill. His eyes flicked up to hers and the arousal there was palpable, pupils blown. The way Dean looked at her stole her breath away. Eyes still locked, Dean got out of his boxers. He cupped the back of her neck, leaning forward and giving her another rough kiss, pressing his cock against hers at the same time.

 

She moaned into his mouth. Dean moved his hips again, dragging his cock against hers, She kicked her legs up, resting her heels above his ass, using her legs to squeeze him closer, add more friction. 

 

She could have stayed like that forever, kissing him, feeling him, but Dean broke off the kiss. “Palm,” he said, more of a grunt than actual English.

 

Sam held up her palm. Dean spit into it. She reached between them and slicked them up. Dean started moving again, and Sam pulled at both of them. She was gasping now, Dean too, their bodies slipping gracelessly against each other with spit and sweat.

 

He buried his face in her neck, and she closed her eyes, biting down on his shoulder, groaning at the pulses of pleasure streaming through her. Everywhere Dean’s hands roamed buzzed, his touch lingering.

 

It had been so long. They’d fooled around, gotten each other off, but the want coursing through Sam was intense, she wanted something fuller, more complete. She wanted to be full.

 

She came close to coming, and just barely had the strength to bat Dean’s hands away, to break off their kissing. Her lips were sensitive. She sat up. Dean sat up with her.

 

“I want you to-” Sam blushed. She’d said it a thousand times before. In another life, this had been familiar, routine. “I want you to fuck me.”

 

Dean gave her a dark smile. “You sure, sweetheart?” he said in a voice that made her dick twitch.

 

Sam nodded. She bit her lip. “Dean.”

 

Dean kissed her, sucking on her tongue. He pulled off with a wet pop. “Stay here, sugar.”

 

Sam shivered. She knew when he got lost in arousal when the pet names came out. Dean was different when he was like this. He was always captivating to her, but this was something else.

 

She watched him walk over to the closet, his cock bobbing. He pulled out a duffle, unzipping an inner pocket and pulling out a bottle of lube. He walked back. She had her arms up and around his back before he’d even finished crawling onto the bed.

 

They kissed with lazy abandon, teeth clacking, faces wet with spit. She heard the bottle click open.

 

Dean pulled away, meeting her eyes and gauging her reaction as he pressed a finger against her hole. Not pushing in, not rubbing, just letting the lube heat up against her.

 

Sam took in a ragged breath. She lay back down, looping her legs around him again. She closed her eyes, bearing her throat.

 

Dean nibbled at it, rubbing lube around her hole, getting her nice and slick. He added more lube to his fingers, then pressed one in up to the first knuckle.

 

The intrusion burned. She worried she wasn’t ready, wouldn’t like it. Dean distracted her with kisses. Once her body adjusted, once he added more lube, getting the finger in all the way in, the burn was replaced with a slowly building heat, a bolt of pleasure every time Dean rubbed up against her prostate. He was purposefully keeping from pushing at her buttons too much, she knew, holding her off until later.

 

Sam moved her hips, fucking up into Dean’s hand, moaning into his mouth when another blunt finger pushed into her. They kept that rhythm up for ages, Dean working her open, Sam needing him deeper. 

 

She pulled at his cock, keeping her touch light, staying away from his sensitive cockhead. Dean swore under his breath. They were silent, save for pants and wet noises.

 

It wasn’t long before Sam knew she was ready. She took her hand off Dean, pulling away from their sloppy kisses. “Dean,” she said, and that was all she needed to. He knew. His lids lowered.

 

“‘Kay, Sammy,” he murmured. “Just hold on. Fuck.”

 

Dean pulled away. He retrieved the lube, pouring a liberal amount into his palm. He slicked his cock with it, Sam eyeing the red, shiny head with unconcealed lust.

 

Their eyes met. Dean’s face asked a question. Sam spread her legs.

 

Dean gripped himself, lining himself up with her hole. He pushed in, the head stretching her wide. She tried not to show it, but it hurt. Dean stayed there, letting her adjust. They looked at each other, something strong tying their gazes together, something magnetic.

 

Sam squeezed at Dean’s shoulder. She bit her lip. “Move,” she begged.

 

Dean complied, slowly, slowly pushing until he was fully seated inside her.

 

He kissed her at the same time he pistoned his hips. Sam cried out, head falling back against the pillow. Her mouth hung open, and Dean tried to kiss her, but she couldn’t manage it while he was fucking her like that.

 

Fuck. It had been so long. She felt so full. She’d missed this, missed him. 

 

She held tight while he found his rhythm. He watched her and she couldn’t censor her face--features scrunched up one moment, blissed out the next, a fucked-out smile curling her lips up into a wicked grin. 

 

“Missed this,” Dean growled, fucking her deeper. She whimpered. “Wanted it so bad, Sammy.”

 

“Me… too,” she got out between gasps.

 

She drew him into a hungry kiss, more love bites than anything else. Her hands were twitchy, fingers spasming with each thrust of Dean’s, but she held his face, keeping him close, pressing all of her love into him.

 

Dean reached down to jerk her slow and rough, synchronizing the tugs of his wrist with the pistoning of his hips.

 

It was too much for her in an embarrassingly short amount of time. She threw her head back, back arching, sheets sticking to her sweaty body. She moaned loudly. Dean clamped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes widened.

 

“Hush,” Dean said. “He might be back soon.”

 

Sam wasn’t listening. Her body liked when Dean pressed a hand against her mouth. She moaned again, the sound muffled by Dean’s palm.

 

Her toes curled, her fingers clenching, and she gave up grabbing Dean’s jaw in favor of clawing at the sheets. Dean smiled like a cat. “You close?” he said, even though he already knew the answer.

 

Sam nodded, her breaths coming out as reedy whines. Dean kissed her again, and his hips lost their control, fucking harder and more erratically, their skin slapping loudly and wetly. The bed started groaning, and Sam couldn’t keep her eyes open.

 

She was seeing colors behind her eyelids, feeling strong, electric pulses of pleasure. Dean was hitting her prostate dead-on each time. He started stroking her faster, and the heat built and built in her until she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

 

She came with Dean’s fingers pressed into her mouth, his hand muffling the sound of her sobs. She hadn’t felt like this in so long. Dean wrung her orgasm out of her cock, stroking her through the aftershocks. It was perfect.

 

Dean followed her not long after, biting at her throat and grunting as he came deep inside her. He fucked her shallowly and slowly after he came. She was fucked open now, could feel the ease in how Dean slipped out of her hole.

 

Dean collapsed against her, head on her chest. She smiled at the ceiling through overstimulation tears. She wrapped her arms around him. 

 

When they came back into their bodies, they both sat up, slow like they’d survived an explosion, not just had explosive sex. Sam’s eyes met Dean’s. He was a mess. They smiled at each other. Sam unstuck herself from Dean and stood up. On wobbly legs she made her way to the bathroom. She braced herself against the sink and looked at her reflection from under her hair. 

 

If Dean was a mess, she was… she was well fucked. Her hair was sticking up, her face red, tear tracks drying below her eyes, a smattering of come drying on her tummy. Dean came up behind her and squeezed her ass. Come leaked out onto her thigh. He nosed at her temple, gazing at her in the mirror.

 

They showered together, too fucked out to do anything more than halfassedly scrub at each other. Once they were nice and clean, they crawled into the other bed, curling up in each other’s naked arms under the clean sheets.

 

Her body ached, especially where he’d been inside her. It was a pleasant feeling, and she let herself drift, unable to fear anything with Dean peppering the crown of her head with soft little kisses.

 

Sam had no nightmares that night.


	21. Chapter 21

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

 

Sam drifted in and out of sleep. The sun crept over the horizon, and later, her alarm went off, but she and Dean stayed in bed, content to laze around in each other’s arms. Dean was out like a light the whole time. Sam got up to piss or stretch her bones, but always came back to him.

 

In his sleep, Dean made room for her, looping an arm around her waist. Sam sighed, pressing a leg between Dean’s, enjoying the warmth of his arms after the chill of the bathroom.

 

She opened her eyes and found herself sitting on a park bench, looking out over rolling hills and a distant lake. Children laughed somewhere behind her, and happy couples walked their dogs down scenic paths. 

 

In her periphery she registered movement, and turned to find her mother sitting there, smiling at her with a proud and affectionate softness to her eyes.

 

“Mom,” Sam said. 

 

Mary smiled even wider. “Hi, Sam,” she said. 

 

“I’m dreaming.”

 

Mary gave her a look as if she were a child who’d just asked a silly question. “You are. It’s still real.”

 

Sam opened and closed her mouth. She didn’t know what to say. 

 

“I’ve been watching over you,” Mary said. “I’m so proud of you, honey. I’m glad you’re doing better.”

 

“You’re--” Sam caught herself. She didn’t know how much Mary knew, how much she’d seen. 

 

“I just wanted to tell you something,” Mary continued, unperturbed. “You let down the wall, and I know you’re scared of what could crawl out. Don’t worry, okay? You found yourself. I was there when he crawled out of hell, but you saved her, too.”

 

“Mom,” Sam whispered, eyes beading with tears. “I don’t--”

 

“It’s okay,” Mary said, wrapping her in a hug. “I’m here. You don’t have to be scared. Heaven’s watching over you.”

 

When Sam pulled away, the first tear falling, Mary was gone. Sam looked around the park, searching for her, even as she knew that Mary had disappeared. Sam took a deep, shaky breath, wiping at her eyes and looking out at the park. She felt a deep and profound calmness, like Mary’s touch had imparted serenity on her.

 

“Sam.”

 

Sam jumped. Standing in front of her, looking as pensive as ever, was Cas.

 

“Uh, hi, Cas.”

 

Cas held up a hand, palm facing her. “May I?”

 

Sam nodded. She sat up straighter, squaring her shoulders. Cas placed his palm on her forehead and her eyes slid shut. She felt the same shock as before, the same sensation of Cas rifling around inside her head, slipping into headachey places she didn’t know she had.

 

He pulled his hand away and she sagged. Cas was peering at her, squinting at her face like there was something on it. Sam touched her forehead self consciously.

 

“What’s the diagnosis, doc?” she asked, smiling due to her nerves.

 

“You’re… fragile,” Cas said. His pinched expression went away, replaced with one of concern, his features only slightly less scrunched up. “But the way your soul is faring is impressive.”

 

“Impressive?” Sam echoed. “How?”

 

He put a hand over her heart for a moment. He smiled, with effort. She wondered what was going on in heaven to give him that look. “It’s not just yours,” he said. He elaborated before she could think to panic. “Dean is so present in you. Threading his soul where yours hangs loose.”

 

Sam didn’t know what to say. She could picture it in her head, twin beams of light with tendrils reaching out to each other, entangling and entwining endlessly until they were indistinguishable. “Will I be okay?” she asked. She shut her mouth, flushing when the words left her mouth. She already knew the answer, she shouldn’t have asked. 

 

Her feelings were reinforced when Castiel’s lips turned downward in the picture of pity. She turned away, leg bouncing, watching a squirrel bound up an Aspen tree.

 

“I don’t want to convey something I don’t believe,” Cas told her. “But I think if your soul has Dean’s, at the very least, you’ll be able to manage the broken wall.”

 

It wasn’t what she was expecting. “You do.”

 

Cas nodded once. “I do.”

 

“I--thanks,” Sam said. “Thank you, Cas.”

 

Cas melted a little. He wasn’t as stiff and sullen-faced. “You are always welcome, Sam.” Cas stood. “I’m sorry I couldn’t visit you in person. I don’t see myself leaving Heaven anytime soon, not with the restructuring. He wanted me to check in on you, and things are quiet now, so I did as He said.”

 

Sam still wasn’t used to that. She blinked. She got up, too, and opened her mouth to ask a question.

 

“If we never see each other again,” Castiel said, and she closed her mouth, “goodbye, Sam.”

 

Sam smiled at him. She didn’t have to know. Her faith was enough. “Goodbye, Cas.”

 

***

 

Sam woke up to Dean playing with her hair. Their naked bodies were entangled facing each other, Dean’s nose inches from hers. His eyes were droopy with sleep, his mouth curved up in a smile. He pushed her hair behind her ear. “Gettin’ longer,” he drawled, voice slurred with sleep. “You ever gonna cut it?”

 

“No,” Sam said. By Dean’s look, she could tell he agreed with her sentiment. She yawned, stretching her toes. Dean kicked the blankets down to their feet. It was warm enough that Sam didn’t mind. Dean sat up, staring at her body. Sam looked her fill, too. 

 

It didn’t feel real; it was too good to be true. Unlike her hallucinations, though, she was filled with a deep-seated comfort, memorizing the look in Dean’s eyes as his hand ran over her outer thigh.

 

***

 

Bobby sent them on yet another mission. 

 

It was incredibly low stakes--a grocery run, of all things--but Sam couldn’t help pacing their cramped bedroom as she waited for Dean to finish up in the bathroom.

 

The trip was a joint effort by Bobby and Dean to get her out of the house with her training wheels on. She couldn’t stay in forever, and this was definitely a test run. She knew Dean would be watching her every move but acting like he wasn’t, teasing her and making fun of random things in the aisles.

 

It was nothing. It wasn’t scary. It was banal, if anything. And yet. And yet she was wringing her hands, looking out the window and down at Copper’s doghouse longingly. She’d hit in it during an episode and found it surprisingly comfortable.

 

The bathroom door swung open and Dean walked in, patting his drying hands on the seat of his pants. “Well,” he said, cocking his head and giving Sam a cheesy grin. “You ready, Your Majesty?”

 

Sam shook her head. Dean grabbed his wallet, and they went on their way.

 

The nearest grocery store was a little mom and pop place on the outskirts of Sioux Falls with its own farm. The building was an old farmhouse with a few additions tacked on to make more room for food. 

 

Dean got a cart while Sam unfolded Bobby’s grocery list. They went cruising down the aisles, searching for items. Bobby wanted bread, but he didn’t specify what kind. Sam and Dean bickered over rye versus white bread, local brand versus name brand. Sam won out, grabbing some local whole wheat, saying it would do them all good to eat a little better and support the local economy. Dean grumbled, but he couldn’t argue with her when she had that earnest look on her face.

 

Dean went off to look at produce, leaving to Sam to get the other half of the list items. She wandered over to the butcher’s to get Bobby some steak and ground beef.

 

The butcher’s and the deli were unstaffed. Sam peered into the refrigerated displays. It was colder back here, chilled breezes sweeping past her. She’d left the house in just a t-shirt and jeans. She shivered.

 

She looked at the different cuts of meat. There was beef, pork, chicken, seafood… there were whole pigs, pig legs, ribs, chicken wings, various parts of cows. Certain cuts looked almost human. 

 

Sam shook her head. She wasn’t going to let it happen. She was a vegetarian, but Dean and Bobby weren’t. This wasn’t for her. Dean was looking forward to the steak. She peered into the back. “Hello?” she called. 

 

No one answered. 

 

Sam leaned back. Her eyes strayed to the back area. Pigs were strung up, skinned, dangling by their feet. She should look away. She really should. 

 

She didn’t.

 

She thought she saw movement by the back door. She leaned forward. One of the pigs was much longer, his hands hanging just a few feet above the ground.

 

Skinned hands. They could have been anyone’s, but the ring on one of the fingers was unmistakable. Her eyes slowly looked upward. Even without skin, she could recognize Dean.

 

Sam blinked rapidly. The body turned back into a pig. 

 

“Can I help you?”

 

Sam jolted. The butcher was across the counter from her, polishing a butcher’s knife. She smiled in apology, looking up into his face.

 

Into Lucifer’s leer. Her own blood covered his knife. 

 

Something icy cold sank into her shoulder. She flinched with her whole body, rearing away the intrusion. 

 

“Hey. Sammy, hey.” Dean pulled at her again, but this time his fingers weren’t ice picks. He rubbed at her arms. “Look at me.”

 

Sam looked him in the eyes, struck mute. Her heart was thumping out of her chest. She kept expecting something else to happen, like a fucking jump scare in a horror movie. “Talk to me,” Dean said.

 

“I’m okay,” Sam said, voice faint, looking over Dean’s shoulder.

 

“Hey,” Dean said it louder this time. He moved his head until he was in her line of sight. She looked at him again. “Sam, what time is it?”

 

It took her a moment to process his words. She brought her shaking wrist up to her eyes. “Eleven fifteen,” she said.

 

Dean nodded. “What day?”

 

“November… eighteenth?” she tried

 

Dean nodded again, looking so relieved he was gonna pass out. “Do I gotta ask you the year?”

 

“No.” Sam smiled at him. “Thanks.”

 

Dean smiled back, something small and private and just for her. He ran his hand down her arm and squeezed her hand.

 

The butcher cleared his throat. He was looking between them with a raised eyebrow and lips pulled thin. He had a jowled face and a white beard, but was as far from Santa Claus-esque merriment as possible. More like Backwater Bill. “You gonna buy something?” he asked.

 

Sam ordered the cut and paid for it, but let Dean handle the package when the butcher wrapped it up for them. They walked over to the checkout with their cart loaded with food. Sam pushed the cart, and Dean walked beside her, casually putting one hand on the edge of the cart, his last two fingers touching hers.

 

They checked out without any issues. Dean put some CCR on for the drive back. Sam wished it were warm enough for her to lower her window and stick her arm out, catching the wind. 

 

Bobby was finishing a walk with Copper when they got back. He let her off her leash and ushered her inside before helping them bring all the groceries inside. Sam put things in the pantry, Dean in the fridge, Bobby grabbing up anything they didn’t.

 

“Thanks, boys,” Bobby said. “Make it down for dinner in time. I’m makin’ somethin’ special for both of you.”

 

“Hell yes,” Dean said at the same time Sam said, “do you want any help?”

 

“Naw.” Bobby waved them off. “Today’s yours. Git.”

 

***

 

They picked their way through the unkempt natural area behind Bobby’s backyard, Copper on their heels. Sam looked at each tree, each bush as she passed. All the leaves were gone, leaving spindly black branches laden with ice. She marveled at how so much and so little time could pass by all at once. Sometimes it felt like time stood still at Bobby’s.

 

Sam looked up at the sky, wondering how true that idea was. She took a moment to thank god, to say hi to Mom and Dad and ask Cas if he was alright.

 

They found a tree to sit under. The sun was out, making the winter chill a little more tolerable. Sam knew that it would get below freezing soon. It would snow more. There’d be blizzards. It wouldn’t start to thaw until months from now, wouldn’t get any warmer until much later.

 

She tried to picture her June self, sitting in this very place, surrounded by grass, green leaves, and bouncing bumble bees. She tried to see Dean with his face tilted toward the blue sky, his freckles coming out in full force. He’d wear a tank top on hotter days. He’d kill her if she told anyone, but he had khaki shorts for humid days. She could see his smile. Maybe she’d take him fishing.

 

Dean poked her in the elbow. “You good?” he asked. 

 

Sam leaned back against the tree trunk, bark rough against her back. She sighed, reaching down to weave her fingers through Dean’s. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m okay.”

 

Dean hummed, shuffling a little closer. He pressed a kiss to her cheek, staying in her orbit after. She turned to face him, leaning into the next kiss. 

 

They pulled apart. Dean stared out at the forest. “Gonna be a bitch to run the auto shop all by ourselves while Bobby’s gone,” he said.

 

“Eh,” Sam could feel her dimples poking out. Dean looked lighter at the sight of them. “We’ll be okay.”

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, “I think we will.”

 

Sam leaned on Dean’s shoulder. Dean wrapped an arm around her. Copper curled up on her feet. She was content to exist there, just for a little longer. They’d go back in soon enough. Dinner would be ready soon. Dean had swiped some discount movies that looked terrible from the checkout aisle, and Sam had bought some popcorn. She was looking forward to their evening.

 

Dean kissed her temple. Sam idly pet Copper. A breeze blew, but she hardly felt it, wrapped up in Dean’s arms.

 

Sam couldn’t even feel the cold.

 

The end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY to my subscribers whose emails were just spammed with 21 notifications. Hehe

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to be_my_precious for being so committed and amazing and sweet. You were the best partner I could have asked for. Art post here: https://be-my-precious.livejournal.com/805350.html
> 
> Last year my bigbang didn't get published, and I turned it into an Amazon novel. It's good to be back! Also, watch out for my upcoming summergen :)
> 
> Thank you so much to you guys, who are always here, ever faithful. Your comments and kudoses and general sweetness are what keep me going. This is for you. Xoxo


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